Dominican Dandies Dominate Multicultural Hall of Fame Celebration

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — They streamed down Susquehanna Avenue, hoisting their Dominican Republic flags, wearing their Dominican Republic World Baseball Classic caps and carrying their colorful signs.

"I'm a walking party in Boston," Pedro Martinez had said Saturday, and talk about understatements.

The man is a walking party everywhere he goes, especially Sunday, dancing onto the Hall of Fame induction stage to a merengue beat as thousands of fans—Latin, American, you name it—roared their approval. They banged drums. They honked horns.

"Hola!" Pedro hollered as he approached the podium, beginning a call-and-response surely unlike anything that's ever echoed through these Cooperstown hills.

Hola!

"Hola!"

Hola!

Thirty-four years ago here, the late Hall of Fame radio broadcaster Ernie Harwell included in his speech part of an essay he had written for The Sporting News in 1955, entitled "The Game for All America."

"In baseball, democracy shines its clearest," Harwell said. "The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color is merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another."

It is still a game for America, this baseball, this evolving, changing, wonderful, multicultural game that sometimes still resembles 1955 but increasingly is looking and acting like 2015.

As ever, it is a game for all shapes and sizes, and never was that emphasized more than in an induction class that included Randy Johnson, all 6'10" of him, and Pedro and Craig Biggio, all 5'11" of each of them. At 6'3", John Smoltz checked in right about in the middle.

"My brother from another mother!" Pedro exclaimed onstage to Johnson, before joking: "I just want to ask you a question: How does the weather feel when you stand up?"

Like Johnson has never heard that one before. Then again, before Sunday, the tallest pitcher ever inducted into the Hall of Fame was 6'5" (Ferguson Jenkins and Don Drysdale). Point taken.

Mike Groll/Associated Press

Today's baseball is the same timeless game, only it now exists comfortably in a multitasking world. Other than Pedro, nobody drew louder applause than beloved icon and true home run king Hank Aaron on Sunday. Meantime, from his seat among the Hall of Famers on stage, Johnson, an accomplished photographer in his baseball retirement, worked a camera hard around his induction speech.

"I got a picture of each inductee," Johnson told me afterward during a private moment. "I told them I'll be the official photographer from that angle."

Johnson smiled broadly, the awe of a Hall of Fame induction cracking even one of the most notoriously hard-shell exteriors of our generation.

Though today's major league game is played by millionaires—Smoltz actually thanked a friend with a private plane who set up his family and friends with a private flight in for the weekend—it still remains, as ever, a game that starts with fathers and sons at home working together.

Mike Groll/Associated Press

Biggio spoke of his late father, an air traffic controller, and smiled as he said, "One of the things he used to like to do was take some rope, tie it around my waist and then tie it to the backstop while throwing me batting practice to try and keep me from lunging."

It worked, too, Biggio said, before drawing a big laugh when he said, "I came home every day with rope burns around my waist."

The customers on his paper route suffered, too.

"It was an afternoon newspaper, Newsday," Biggio said. "Because most of the time I didn't get home [from practice] until 7 or 7:30, that's when people on my route eventually got the paper."

"Sorry about that," he deadpanned.

It is a game of sacrifices in which boys will be boys and parents will always be looking for an edge. It is a game in which an old-school pitcher on Sunday became the first pitcher who has undergone Tommy John surgery to be enshrined here. And it was to the parents that Smoltz addressed perhaps the most important message of his speech that, entertainingly, clocked in at 29:29, his old uniform number twice.

Mike Groll/Associated Press

"I want to encourage the families and parents that are out there to understand that this is not normal to have a surgery at 14 and 15 years old," Smoltz preached. "You have time. Baseball is not a year-round sport. You have an opportunity to be athletic and play other sports. Don't let the institutions that are out there guaranteeing scholarship dollars and signing bonuses [convince you] that this is the way.

"We have such great, dynamic arms in our game that it's a shame that we're having one, two, three Tommy John recipients. I want to encourage you, if nothing else, know that your children's desire and passion to play baseball is something they can do without a competitive pitch.

"Every throw a kid makes today is a competitive pitch. They don't go outside. They don't throw enough. They're competing and maxing out too hard too early. That's why we're having these problems.

"Please, take care of those great future arms."

Smoltz's words of wisdom, which hopefully reach at least even a small portion of his intended audience, were greeted with loud cheers from an estimated 45,000. The crowd ranged from enthusiastically American (half of Texas appeared to travel here for Biggio, the first Houston Astro enshrined) to full-throated international.

Not since the Dominican Dandy himself, Juan Marichal, was inducted in 1983 has a Dominican Republic native been honored here, and the multicultural flavor continually energized the ceremony on a blazing hot day.

Mike Groll/Associated Press

Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson followed an opening welcome in English by repeating it in Spanish, and that Pedro served as the cleanup hitter, the last speech of the day, only heightened the anticipation.

When he finally danced onto the stage, he spoke in English, he spoke in Spanish and he was alternately playful, soulful and spiritual.

He wore a bright blue suit with a Dominican flag-flavored red, white and blue tie and patches on each sleeve.

On his right arm was the Dominican Republic coat of arms.

On his left, the United States coat of arms.

"I wanted to make sure that I recognized both sides, the Dominican Republic, because I was born there," Pedro said. "A lot of the people, as you saw, showed up from all over the country and the…different places to support one of its sons being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

"I'm a U.S. citizen, I respect America and I wanted to recognize America. I wanted to give America the same props I gave the Dominican Republic because without America, I wouldn't be standing in Cooperstown, New York, being inducted into the Hall of Fame."

Indeed, in baseball, democracy shines its clearest, and the only race that matters is the race to the bag. These words were true when Harwell first wrote them in 1955, and again and again they are emphasized, with each new season, with each new Hall of Fame class.

Mike Groll/Associated Press

Pedro closed his speech by asking Marichal to join him near the podium and, together, they held up the Dominican flag. He said the idea came to him at 6:30 Sunday morning, when he was having a difficult time "catching that last hour or two of sleep."

"It occurred to me that today, on Father's Day [in the Dominican Republic], I don't think the Dominican Republic will have a better image than having me and Marichal, who cleared the way for all of us to Cooperstown," he said.

He said, "It was the greatest gift I could probably come up with for a Father's Day in the Dominican [Republic] and for the Dominican population." What else could you hope for from this increasingly raucous, loud, multicultural game?

It is Father's Day and gifts and down in front. It is horns and drums and multitasking and, yes, today's game comes in many shapes, sizes and flavors. Sometimes, even, to a merengue beat.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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