Sport: Harvesting Baseball Talent

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Joaquin Andujar, pitching ace of the St. Louis Cardinal staff who last week became the season's first 20-game winner, was sitting in Dodger Stadium watching Los Angeles Outfielder Pedro Guerrero taking batting practice. Andujar's thoughts about the perennial .300 hitter went beyond the manicured Los Angeles diamond back to the rocky fields of San Pedro de Macoris, a hardscrabble town in the Dominican Republic where, as a teenager, he had first hurled fastballs and curves to Guerrero. Both Andujar, 32, and Guerrero, 29, are the sons of sugarmill workers, and there was little money. But, the pitcher recalls, "we found a rubber ball and a piece of wood for a bat and played with that." Both were signed up by major league scouts at age 16.

The journey of two local boys to the big leagues would be the talk of any other town. But in San Pedro (pop. 123,000), theirs are just two of many tales. For while San Pedro turns out a respectable amount of sugar, it refines ballplayers in unrivaled numbers. No other community of its size anywhere has produced so many big league players--some 270 in the past 15 years. A dozen Macoristas are currently playing in the majors, and about 140 more are on minor league teams in the U.S.

"San Pedro is a sleepy town, and there is little to do," explains Oakland A's Shortstop Alfredo Griffin. "Baseball is the big thing." But what makes Macoristas so good at the game? "It's the good weather," suggests Atlanta Braves Caribbean Scout Pedro Gonzales, who was born there. "It could be the water or the diet. No one knows," says Cleveland Indians President Peter Bavasi, whose Macorista shortstop, Julio Franco, 24, went into last weekend hitting .294. Says Franco simply: "People are poor. They want to play ball." Still, the town has no corner on poverty, sunshine or major league dreams.

Set on the south coast 40 miles from Santo Domingo, San Pedro began work on its two main export crops, sugar and baseball talent, more or less simultaneously. At the turn of the century, the game was cultivated by newly arrived American owners of the sugar mills, who sponsored company teams in local competition. The mill workers were good players, in part, it is said, because wielding machetes in the cane fields had strengthened their arms. Ensuing years of team rivalry and the 1916-24 occupation by U.S. Marines helped make America's national pastime San Pedro's major social activity.

In the '60s, a number of outstanding Dominican players--including future Hall of Fame Pitcher Juan Marichal, Rico Carty and the three Alou brothers, Felipe, Jesus and Matty--went off to the U.S. and major league success. Impressed, the Dominican government built three professional-quality parks on the island, one of them in San Pedro. Today the town draws youngsters from other communities who move there to play on San Pedro's 200 teams.