'Getting Off of the Island'


The problems, it would seem, came long ago, when he was growing up in the
tiny town of Ingenio Quisqueya, in the Dominican province of San Pedro de
Macoris, a place that has long been baseball-rich but money-poor. His mother,
Andrea, raised him with help from his grandfather, and he found himself
following his older brothers, Julio and Federico, to the town's fields to
play baseball. He was a small, skinny third baseman, "not too fast," he said,
because his legs weren't chiseled then as they are now. He and his friends
would imitate the batting stances of the players they saw on TV.

"I would be Cal Ripken," Soriano said. "Then I would be Tony Fernandez. I had
heroes. I wanted to be like them," and he stood to mimic the upright stance
of Ripken.

Andrea Soriano wanted the youngest of her four children to go to school, so
Alfonso followed orders. But it presented a problem. Other kids would eschew
classes to play baseball in the morning, working out at the academies
sponsored by major league teams, the places where American clubs developed
talent and hid it away so they could pounce, signing prospects as soon as
they turned 16.

"I was in school," Soriano said. "The American scouts, they never see me."

Instead, playing in the afternoons in a community program, his teams would
face those from Japanese academies. He drew the attention of their scouts. It
was his intention to earn money playing baseball somewhere, sometime. Japan?
The United States? To a teenager in Ingenio Quisqueya, the difference seemed
negligible.

"Dominican players, they're not always educated on how to make it," said
former major league pitcher Jose Rijo, a special assistant to Nationals
General Manager Jim Bowden who is a Dominican himself. "They just think about
getting off of the island to play baseball. They're hungry, and they'll go
anywhere to feed the hunger."

So in 1994, Soriano signed with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of the Japanese
League. He was assigned to their minor league affiliate. He reported for
instructional league in 1995, two months away from home for the first time
ever. He arrived in Hiroshima and somehow found the bus to take him to the
players' quarters. He still remembers how the steering wheel was on the right
side, how the driver followed the left side of the road.

"I was getting confused," Soriano said. "And when I get to the place that
everybody stays, I see the food."

Much of it was raw. "There was no sauce," he said. A week in, he wanted to
come home. Some veteran players from the Dominican persuaded him to stay. He
hit .214 in the minors in 1996, .252 the following year and then was called
up. In nine games in Japan's Central League, he managed two hits in 17
at-bats. Yet he learned Japanese and found someone who could reasonably
replicate Dominican food.

"I thought that's where my future is," he said. "I'm not even thinking about
coming to the majors, to America. When I go to Japan, I think about playing
in Japan for all my career."

He had grown comfortable. Stability, for all of a few seconds.