dominican republic and major league baseball and geoffrey kirkman

Our cruise ship stopped for 10 hours each at Casa de Campo, Dominican Republic; San Juan, PR; and Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (USA Virgin Islands) on the days of April 25, 26, and 27. Each land left an indelible impression on me, and I would like to tell you what I felt and saw at each place in this and the next essay.

The Dominican Republic

I decided to take a shore excursion to the Cathedral City of Higuey, about 45 or so kilometers from our landing spot (Casa de Campo, which is about 2 hours East of Santo Domingo and is near most of the resorts). Higuey was the site of the first church in the Western Hemisphere, built early in the 16th century, and the Cathedral is named "La Altagracia" to commemorate the bringing of a painting of the Virgin Mary to Higuey in the early years of the 16th century. Dominicans are proud of the fact that John Paul II, the most traveled Pope in history, thrice visited their land; indeed, his visit in January 1980 to the Cathedral was the first overseas visit of his papacy, which only commenced three months previously. He stopped in Higuey because it was the place from which the Gospel went forth in the New World. As I recall, however, John Paul II had other things on his mind when in Higuey in 1980. After his 22-hour visit, he dashed off to meeting of the Latin American bishops to let them know where he stood on the all-important question of Liberation Theology.

For those who may not recall the theological currents of those days, it was a time of the first "liberation-type" theologies. Various long-oppressed minority groups were beginning to speak. James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power (1969) launched the discipline of Black Theology, which in turn became the fruitful mother of children, for in its wake followed books on Feminist Theology, Latin American liberation theology, Native American theology, Gay and Lesbian theology, etc. The underlying principle of all these theologies was the same: that God was the God of the Exodus who liberated the people of Israel 3000+ years ago from the hands of Pharoah and would liberate other long-oppressed groups today. The big name in Latin American theology was Gustavo Gutierrez, whose 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation, tried to marry biblical religion with radical political philosophy to echo the kinds of themes urged by James Cone. Then, in the late 1970s, liberal Protestant theologian Robert McAfee Brown wrote his Theology in a New Key, where he put his official stamp of approval on this theology for White North American audiences. When John Paul II became Pope in October 1978, he was shaped by an experience of growing up in Communist Poland and the withering effects of communism/socialism on human dignity and Christian faith. Thus, he would have nothing to do with this new liberation theology, and would use his first overseas trip not simply to stop off at Higuey City and the Cathedral of La Altagracia, but to condemn the adoption by Christian bishops of Marxist models of social action.

The reason the Pope felt he needed to step in and denounce liberation theology was because so many of the people in the DR and other Latin American nations are so poor. Such a theology, which talks about the liberation of the oppressed through political efforts, might be very attractive to a country whose major soures of income are not from goods produced in the country but from the international tourist trade and transfer payments from Dominicans living abroad (mostly in the US) to their families back home. John Paul's fear didn't seem to be that Christian people would understand their faith as a liberation of sorts; he was adamantly opposed, however, to marrying Christian faith with themes from Marxist political philosophy.

The Dominican Republic Today

When we landed in the DR on April 25, however, these realities were long past. We landed at a dock specially constructed to accommodate our huge cruise liner. What first struck me about the land was the fact that no person could be seen as far as the eye could reach. However, there were two baseball parks (not in use at 1:00 p.m.) within easy distance, which reminded me that one of the biggest "stories" of the DR in the past 50 years is not the replacement of a dictatorial leader (Trujillo) in the 1960s for a parliamentary democracy but the flooding of Major League Baseball by Dominican players. Of the 895 active or disabled list major league players now, an amazing 101 of them are from the DR. The first DR player to play in the major leagues, however, was only in 1956, and the most famous of them all is probably Felipe Alou, the oldest of the three Alou brothers, who began to play in 1958. A new film by fellow Brown Univ. alum Geoffrey Kirkman, entitled "The Republic of Baseball: The Dominican Giants of the American Game," was first shown less than two months ago in San Diego at the World Baseball Classic. Two of the favorites in that tourney, the US and the DR, didn't win; Japan ended up besting Cuba in the finals. Nevertheless, this film, which details the trials that the first generation of Dominican players (Alou, Manny Mota, Juan Marichal) had to overcome should be interesting viewing--whenever it makes it my way.

Summary Thoughts

These two realities of Dominican life, a few very rich baseball players and masses of impoverished people, make up the 9.1 million people of the DR. There doesn't seem to be any escape from the poverty endemic to so many island nations, and so our guide asked us repeatedly, as we left the bus and returned to the comfortable surroundings of our cruise ship, to "remember my country." This essay is dedicated to that remembrance.

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