P.R. Is All Good for the Molinas

Of all the places Jose Molina imagined he might play on his birthday, he never dreamed of this one. He turns 28 today, and he’ll play at home.

For Jose and his brother Bengie, the Angel catchers, life as a baseball player has meant summers away from their Puerto Rico homeland. Since 1993, when each made his minor league debut, the brothers have returned home once during a baseball season, for the funeral of their grandmother.

The occasion is happy tonight, bordering on thrilling. With the Angels playing three games here, as part of the Montreal Expos’ 22-game fund-raiser, the Molina boys will have their first chance to play in front of family and friends, a rooting section Bengie said would number “150, easy.”

Mom and Dad have flown to the mainland to catch the Angels and their catchers, but aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors have seen the Molina brothers play in person only in the Puerto Rican winter leagues, and before that in amateur leagues.

“Not,” Bengie said, “in the best baseball in the world.”

As the brothers packed their bags in Tampa, Fla., Sunday afternoon, they already anticipated an evening of Mom’s home cooking -- steak and onions, avocado and fried plantains for Bengie; chicken, rice and beans for Jose. While Bengie moved to Arizona several years ago, Jose still lives in Puerto Rico and anxiously awaited his first visit to the home he and his wife purchased this spring, one he knows only from photographs.

“I just bought a house,” he said. “Now I want to see it.”

The Molina name is somewhat famous among baseball fans here, in part because of Dad. Benjamin Molina, a second baseman, was inducted into the Puerto Rican amateur baseball hall of fame in October -- on the same day the Angels won Game 7 of the World Series. The brothers anticipate a warm reception tonight, although nothing along the lines of the one fellow Puerto Rican Roberto Alomar got when the Expos and New York Mets played here in April.

“There’s Roberto Alomar and there’s Bengie Molina. He’s a Hall of Famer,” Bengie said.

The atmosphere figures to be lively -- and enjoyable for all except the pitchers, once they notice the foul poles at Hiram Bithorn Stadium are only 315 feet from home plate. The crowds celebrate the game, buy pina coladas from vendors, cheer without a monkey appearing on the scoreboard and prefer nine innings of song and dance with their baseball.

“There’s going to be a lot of music, a lot of enthusiasm,” Bengie said. “It’s Latin American baseball. It’s the way we play baseball.”

And, if the Molinas can convert some of the locals into Angel fans, so much the better.

“They’re Yankee fans,” Bengie said. “Everybody in Puerto Rico is a Yankee fan, except for my mom.”