The Dominican Experience: There’s Nothing Quite Like It : Baseball: For intensity and sheer love of the game, it’s hard to beat players and fans on this island.

The irresistible logic of 10-year-old Jose Manuel ends the debate among the boys hanging out at Estadio Tetelo Varga--San Pedro’s baseball stadium.

The noisy discussion was prompted by a Norteamericano’s question: Which is more important, school or baseball? As the stadium’s corrugated roof clatters in the late afternoon breeze, most of the youngsters shout “pelota”--”ball” in Spanish.

But Jose has a better answer.

“School is important because there you learn to write,” he says. “Then when it comes time to sign with a team, I can write my name.”

To understand that this painfully skinny, barefoot kid sees the inevitability of baseball in his future is to offer some explanation of the baseball madness that pervades everyday life in this poor Caribbean country.

Everywhere there are signs of the national obsession: Boys play with sticks and homemade balls in Santo Domingo’s barrios; teen-agers execute flawless double plays on sugar mill diamonds groomed by wandering cows; the countryside is dotted with baseball “academies” where young men spend days in Dodgers, Astros and Blue Jays mufti learning curveballs and English, their nights in barracks, dreaming of the big league.

Other countries may have lots of sports, but here there is only one--pelota.

“The only thing we know how to do is play baseball,” says Juan Samuel of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who grew up on a dirt street near San Pedro’s stadium. “The kids in the states can go to school and have a nice life. Here, baseball is your only chance.”

There is reason for Jose to believe in that chance at El Grande Carpa--the Big Show. Seventy-seven Dominicans were in the majors last year, at least 18 from this sugar mill city; stars like Samuel, George Bell, Alfredo Griffin and Tony Fernandez.

Such players are national heroes. Dodger veteran Manny Mota, a senior statesman of Dominican ball, is called by reporters to comment on perestroika. He grills presidential candidates on their sports backgrounds during his weekly television show.

“They are nervous, not me,” he says with a laugh.

But the intensity of baseball, so appreciated here, is sometimes considered strange in the states. Joaquin Andujar, ejected from a 1985 World Series game for charging an umpire, was said to have later demolished a clubhouse toilet with a bat. Bell, the 1987 American League MVP, staged an outfield sit-in when demoted to designated hitter. Pascual Perez, who missed a pitching start by getting lost on the way to Atlanta’s stadium, threw a ball into the Cubs dugout last year after he was hit by a line drive. “That’s Perez,” said Montreal Manager Buck Rodgers. “Never a dull minute.”

“We all want to win,” says Mariano Duncan, a former Dodger now with Cincinnati. “We take baseball seriously. Here we take it deep inside.”

Here baseball is more than a sport. It is a socio-economic force that resounds throughout the island. The “bolas” and strikes are familiar to Norteamericanos, but much of what happens on and off field is part of a unique culture.

“It’s definitely different down here,” says Greg Biagini, manager of the Orioles’ Rochester club, who skippered the San Pedro Estrellas in this year’s Dominican Winter League. “On opening night, I killed a cow on my way home.” Biagini notes the season record is two cows, then pauses.

“At least that’s this team’s record,” he says as clarification.

DOMINICAN MYSTIQUE

If a city the size of Muncie, Ind., began producing a steady stream of star infielders, you’d expect a mob of scouts to rush town square.

That’s what has happened in San Pedro and in the country itself. Dozens of scouts, including some from Japan, range the island for talent.

“Before, just a few clubs had scouts. Now everyone is looking,” says Manny Lantigua, a San Diego Padres scout. “Now you have to look harder.”

Theories are many to explain why baseball, introduced here by occupying U.S. forces early in the century, is better in the Dominican. Among them:

--Genetics. The wisdom is Dominicans are smaller, wirier, quicker: a natural edge for infielders. The truth is Dominicans--like every nationality--come in all sizes, from 6-foot-2 Gilberto Reyes, a Montreal catcher, to Pittsburgh infielder Rafael Belliard, a 5-foot-6 veteran with slightly Oriental features.

“I’m Chinese,” he claims, further confusing the issue.

--Because a glove and bat cost an average month’s wages, kids use tree branch bats, gloves fashioned from milk cartons, balls of stuffed socks and occasionally limes. The field may be a street or an ill-kept diamond. These disadvantages, the wisdom goes, build skill and character.

“If you can play shortstop on our field, you deserve to be in the big leagues,” Biagini said. “The ball takes hops that are unbelievable.”

--Another wisdom says Dominicans excel because they play all the time. Here baseball weather reigns year-round. The sugar mills that provide employment and social structure also provide equipment and fields. There are little leagues, sugar leagues, factory leagues, even police leagues.

“All the sugar mills have some program to keep the people doing something in the dead times,” says Ralph Avila, head of the Dodgers’ Latin American program. “The only thing they can do is go to the field and play ball.”

There is also the matter of Dominican spirit. “They don’t quit. They don’t give up if things are going bad,” says Karl Kuehl, director of player development at Oakland.

But while Dominicans may be outstanding athletes, U.S. clubs find them lacking in the area of baseball strategy and tactics.

“They can run, throw and hit; their natural skills are great. But their knowledge of structure isn’t worth a damn,” Kuehl said.

That is why Oakland is joining the score of U.S. clubs with training facilities here to prepare Dominicans for big league ball. Among them is Las Palmas, the Dodger’s 50-acre academy, a kind of sports prep school with barracks for 40, satellite dishes, computers, videotaped instruction, a Manny Mota Field and a Tommy Lasorda Dining Room.

Here recruits are fed in quality and quantity above island standards. They get medical treatment, lessons in English, Spanish and American culture. One classroom has a blackboard lesson on placing a telephone call and posters showing the best place, statistically, to swing in the strike zone.

Understandably, Las Palmas is as sought after as Harvard. More than 9,000 have tried out there; some are invited, some walked miles to plead their case at the gate. Most of those accepted are released after 30 days.

“Many times the parents will come to the gate and beg us to take their son back,” Avila said.

EL FANATICO

The Roman “fanaticus” (meaning “of the temple”) is the common root, but the Spanish and English derivations go a long way in describing the difference between American “fans” and Dominican “fanaticos.”

Stories about Dominican fanaticos are legend: Players have been pelted with rocks; near riots suppressed by troops with submachineguns.

“The fans here are crazier,” says Dodger pitcher John Wetteland. “It’s not unusual to have a couple fights break out during a game.”

Dominicans have mellowed a bit, but watching a Dominican League game from the stands is not for the faint-hearted.

The difference is evident as you make your way through street venders selling peeled oranges and boiled corn. Fanaticos are frisked at the turnstiles by national police in battered riot helmets. While some American stadiums check for booze, the search here is for guns and knives. Pints of raw-tasting 80-proof rum sold in and out of the stadium are ignored.

There is entertainment other than baseball. A fire-eater performs on the roof of a dugout. A man in a purple top hat stalks the aisles doing magic tricks. Between innings, the stadium echoes with merengue music, often performed by a live band. Fans, players, even police tapping nightsticks, sway to the beat.

The stands also buzz with wagering. Bets are laid down constantly, on the game, the inning, the at-bat.

“They’ll bet on whether the batter will take the next pitch,” said Dave Wallace, a Dodger pitching coach.

Be it the rum or wagers, the crowd can get, well, intense. During a game between the Santo Domingo Licey and Estrellas, a confused play has three San Pedro runners converging on third base. One bolts for home, smashing into the Licey pitcher covering the rundown and carries him across home plate.

The fanaticos yell and gesture. A haymaker is thrown, snapping back someone’s head. A few rows back, a heated discussion ends when a man smashes his bottle of El Presidente beer across a chair. Someone shouts: “Your pitchers are too skinny!”

“A lot of major league players don’t like it here,” Duncan explains. “The fans are louder.”

Outside the stadium, passions also run high. A wizened old man waving a bat faces off with a drunken younger man holding a machete as long as his arm.

“I’ll cut off your head, little man,” he yells.

The old man smiles and takes practice swings as a crowd yells encouragements.

“I might be little,” he said, “but I can still hit the ball beautifully.”

TOUGH ENOUGH

“Tough” and “neat” are words that pop up often in George Bell’s conversation.

It was tough growing up in a five-room house with four siblings in Santa Fe, one of the sugar mill towns that ring San Pedro. It was neat playing baseball with homemade equipment at age 5. It was tough playing with older kids who whacked him for missing a play, but it was neat trying to be the best. It was tough, at age 17, to break into U.S. ball at Helena, Mont., a place he only knew of from comic book Westerns.

“All of a sudden I was there looking, for gunfighters,” he says. “It was neat.”

Not all neat. Bell remembers living on convenience store candy because he couldn’t speak English.

“I didn’t know what to order,” he says. “I would have money in my pocket and I would be hungry, but I didn’t know what to get.”

Some of that has changed. English lessons are now part of the daily regimen.

“When I started language was a big problem,” says Manny Acta, an outfielder with the Astros’ Columbus, Ga., minor league club. “If you didn’t understand a coach, he didn’t say ‘He doesn’t speak English.’ He said ‘This guy is stupid.’

“Now every rookie team has a Spanish speaker and they pay for English school.”

Bell sees this as an improvement, but wonders about the Americanization of Dominican ball. He sees computers and video tapes taking something from the game.

“The coaches and instructors are trying to do everything in high tech, but a computer is not going to help,” he says. “Baseball is a different sport. You play on instinct.”

Bell’s observations came on a sunny Sunday in the yard of his home as passersby on the busy San Pedro street wave and shout “Jorge.” The Bell manse includes several buildings, a satellite dish and a pond stocked with wooden ducks. The bridge over the pond is dusted with the fine sugar mill grit that covers everything here.

Down the street, past an empty lot where pigs root garbage piles, is Andujar’s home and construction company that employs 200 people. Alfredo Griffin’s home is next door.

All the players are immensely popular. Andujar is known to approach young players, distribute equipment and give a half hour of instruction. Bell is a favorite among the local kids for doing similar kindnesses. He and Griffin also distribute food and fund orphanages.

Bell shrugs this off. “It is better when people don’t know,” he says.

Not all Dominican players are success stories. Many never make it beyond the farm clubs. One of Bell’s brothers drives a New York taxi; Samuel’s brother works in a New Jersey factory.

“Seventy percent of the kids who get released stay in the states,” Samuel said. “A lot get into drugs. Your friends there will get you in trouble.”

But risk of failure in the land of the Norteamericanos can’t blunt the dreams of riches and baseball glory in young players like Franklin Lorenzo, an 18-year-old catcher from Haina.

Lorenzo looks bored when asked about the uncertainties he faces.

“I don’t worry,” he said. “I know how to play ball.”