Success Is a Nice Bonus for Aybar

One swing by Barry Bonds overshadowed everything else Friday night at SBC Park, including a Dodger comeback, two more hits by their latest leadoff batter, and a final counterpunch by the San Francisco Giants in the ninth.

Bonds hit his first home run since being activated five days ago and 704th of his career in the Dodgers’ 5-4 loss to the Giants. Todd Linden’s broken-bat single with one out in the ninth scored Jason Ellison with the winning run.

In the Dodger clubhouse, the buzz is about a player whose name elicited embarrassing whispers in the organization a few years ago. The Willy Aybar story is a cautionary tale, a September success saga and a bit of a mystery.

Until banging out 13 hits in seven games as the Dodger leadoff batter, Aybar was best known for having more than $400,000 of his signing bonus taken by the man who helped develop him as a raw teenager in the Dominican Republic.

Aybar, 22, recalls whittling bats from tree branches in his dusty hometown of Bani so that he and his brother, Erick -- now a highly regarded Angel minor leaguer -- could play pick-up games.

“I did what I could to play the game,” he said.

And he helped his family do what it had to do to survive. As a child, Aybar baked and sold bread for $5 a day. His home a few steps from the Bani River would flood every year, forcing his family to take refuge at a nearby school.

The poverty should have ended when the Dodgers signed him for $1.4 million in January 2000. They paid him in two installments of $490,000 after taxes. But the first check was intercepted by Enrique Soto, a man who built a lucrative business grooming and marketing young Dominican ballplayers such as Miguel Tejada.

Soto met Aybar nine years ago and spent countless hours teaching him to switch-hit and field ground balls. He gave him equipment and fed him nutritious meals. And when Aybar was 16, the Dodgers signed him to what was then the largest bonus given to a Dominican player.

A boy whose father worked all his life doing odd jobs for the equivalent of $10 a day should have been rich beyond the family’s wildest dreams.

Aybar’s agent, Rob Plummer, sent the check for the first installment to Soto in Bani. Aybar said he wanted Soto to hold the money until he returned home from the rookie league in Florida. He planned to give Soto about $200,000 for the years spent training him.

Soto instead paid Aybar’s mother about $60,000 and apparently kept the rest. He has never been prosecuted and Aybar told Dodger officials not to pursue the matter because Soto “deserved the money.”

The Dodgers made sure the second bonus installment went into a bank account in Aybar’s name, and he bought his parents a new house shortly thereafter.

Aybar said Friday he has recovered a portion of the first installment, but he no longer will talk about Soto. If Aybar continues to hit the way he has since being called up from triple-A Las Vegas, there will be more money to be made.

“I’m definitely surprised I’m getting the opportunity to play every day,” he said.

He has at least one hit in the seven games he has started, has five multi-hit games and is batting .407.

General Manager Paul DePodesta won’t say Aybar will get first crack at a starting job next season. Aybar hit only five home runs at Las Vegas, and the Dodgers want power at third base. They’ve discussed going after free agent Nomar Garciaparra to play third or making a trade.

Regardless of Aybar’s future, his story will endure. Players at the Dodger academy in the Dominican Republic are warned about unscrupulous scouts, agents and trainers.

“The Dodgers have someone to explain about those things now,” Aybar said. “That’s good.”