Baseball in Granada

                                                                                

First baseball team in Granada, my son, Danny, lower left, top, me "El Coach"

     In Granda, what many Spaniards considered Spain's “deep south,” in 1978, there were only three television stations, mostly silly variety shows, local news, and a Friday night movie, classic Mexican rancheras and American drama really popular. At the movie theaters in town, the three biggest draws, U.S. imports, were Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Rocky, and Saturday Night Fever, cutting edge, for the soft sex scenes, nothing explicit.

     El generalissimo Franco had died three years earlier, after nearly 40 years in power, and Spaniards were still “testing the waters,” so to speak, not sure how far they could go, culturally, the Catholic morality folks always on high alert. Get drunk and yell, “Viva La Republica” could get you jailed, or beaten by the feared Guardia Civil, Franco’s personal Taliban. I knew, in 1933, the U.S. refused to help Spain's Republic against Franco's fascists, supported by Hitler, and I sensed some shame.

     So, you can understand the stir it caused when a prominent magazine pushed the boundaries and announced its next cover would be graced with the photo of a woman in a bathing suit. It was the talk of the town, most Spaniards in doubt. When the big day arrived, people surrounded the town's kiosks. Sure enough, there she was, on the cover, a shapely woman in a bathing suit on full display, the older people disgusted, the younger generation delighted, yet leery. For me, an American living in Spain, it was all a curiosity, but what did it mean for the country, in some places, still living in gothic times but struggling to move into the present.

     After Franco died, King Juan Carlos decided to hold elections, anathema to the Spanish conservatives who preferred he appoint another dictator, or a close Franco replica. Juan Carlos was young, a different generation than the old-stuffy past rulers. Spain held its first election in forty years and Felipe Suarez and his socialist party came out on top. It was as if the country could breathe again, the wicked witch was dead. As a sheltered American, I learned many European countries had socialist and, even, communist, parties. It wasn't the political ideology that was so dangerous but the person elected to lead the country. Spain has had fair elections ever since, moving from right to left, following the will of the voters.

     Under the autocrat Franco, and his supporters, the country had turned inward, agriculture, mainly wine and olive oil, drove its weak economy. Jobs and food were scarce. To survive, Spanish men, with families, became Europe’s migrants, crossing borders, often illegally, to work the fields and restaurants in France, Switzerland, and Germany, work most Europeans felt was beneath them.

     As a university student, I could see many Spaniards were relieved, professors able to speak freely for the first time in many years, without the fear of punishment. In the bars and cafes, people drank wine and spoke politics, without looking over their shoulders. The youth listened to rock ‘n roll music. Tourists, mostly Japanese, once again, began flooding the streets. Cultural influences from outside the country took pokes to pierce the thick wall or fear Franco had built around the country.

     My apartment complex stood at the edge of the growing city, where the Vega began, the wide agricultural farmlands that stretched for miles towards the west, providing produce to Granadinos since the time of the Romans then the Arabs, who perfected the irrigation system that spread to other parts of Europe during the dark ages. Spring came in fast. That Friday night was movie night, the “Pride of the Yankees,” staring Gary Cooper as Yankee great, Lou Gehrig. 

     The streets were empty, everyone home watching television, if they had one, or crowding into friends' homes who did, mostly small black and whites. Movies were a big deal. Once the movie finished, the streets, again, were alive with people, each neighborhood had its own bars and cafes.

     Saturday morning, I walked outside and heard a ruckus coming from a vacant lot, a group of neighborhood kids who looked like they were trying to play baseball, one kid tossing a round stone and the other kid trying to hit it with a short tree branch then running somewhere, looking for a base. A pack of kids ran to the stone to pick it up, not sure what to do with it. The rest of the kids ran around wildly or just watched, looking for something to do. 

     When I returned from my errand a couple of hours later, the kids were still out there trying to figure out the game. I knew most of them, older friends of my five-year-old son, Danny, who became their American friend by default, took him in as if he were an orphan and taught him Spanish. When I asked them what they were doing, they told me they'd seen the baseball movie on television, Los Jankees, and wanted to be like the guys in the movie. Lou Gehrig had inspired them. They knew I was an American and asked if I’d teach them the rules. That’s how it started.

     The days turned into weeks and a month passed. The kids were out there, every day, after school, some foregoing soccer, like clockwork, enough for two teams, practicing as I'd taught them. They got it after I explained all the positions and how the game worked. We carved a playing field from a corner of the Vega, clearing it of rocks and debris. The Moors of old had no idea a portion of their farmland would be used to play American baseball. Imagine, baseball in Granada.

     With a knife, I shaped a piece of wood into a bat, not quite a Louisville slugger, a little rough around the edges but close enough. I figured a tennis ball might move too fast for them, so I made something of  a wiffle ball, like when I was a kid, taking tin foil, shaping it into a ball, and wrapping it with packaging tape, something they could hit and catch with their bare hands. After a month, the kids were, actually, pretty good, enough to make the games exciting, even attracting strangers who would stop by to watch.

     Hey, if the U.S. Marines could teach kids in Dominican Republic and Panama to play ball during breaks in combat operations, why couldn't I start a baseball league in Granada, during peace time, much less damaging, balls and bats better than bombs? 

     I knew my parents were coming to Granada to visit. They’d never been this far from home before. I had told my dad about the kids and their love of baseball, so he showed up with a baseball, a bat, and a mitt. When the kids saw the real thing, their eyes lit up. They all wanted to touch the bat, ball, and mitt, as if touching it would bring them closer to Lou Gehrig, their hero. 

     By the time I left Granada, some months later, the kids were still playing, good enough to transition from the tin foil ball, which was more manageable for beginners, to a tennis ball, which sped up the game and opened up the outfield to long fly balls from the real Louisville slugger. The catcher got to use the mitt. 

     It was strange how teaching them the fine art of baseball brought us closer together, their parents okay with it, I guess. I received invitations to their homes for dinner. I'd come to Granada to learn the roots of my Hispanic culture, as well as the language. Each day, meeting these kids out on the field, I felt a little less America with them, and when I returned home, for good, I brought a little bit of Spain with me. Maybe, I was teaching them more than baseball, maybe something about the larger world outside their world, as I was learning something about the world outside my world, a world of my Spanish-Arab ancestors.