A punk put a gun to a 3-year-old girl's head.
Caracas, Venezuela—the first weekend of 2003. The girl was Chico Carrasquel's granddaughter. A sister of his was also there. So was a pregnant cousin. They had just enjoyed the holidays. They were leaving Chico's house when the two armed men jumped them.
"Give me your car keys," one said.
Or they would shoot the girl.
There was no argument. The women did as told. Given the keys, the gunmen ran off to steal the car.
Chico was in it.
A national hero. A local legend. They threatened him. They made him drive. They struck him. They took his money. They took his gold wristwatch, a keepsake from one of his four baseball All-Star Game appearances in America.
Then they dumped the old man—not three weeks from his 75th birthday—miles from home.
Another carjacking. Another robbery. Violent crime is rampant in Venezuela, and now it had come to the Carrasquel family's front door.
A few weeks before, 27-year-old outfielder Richard Hidalgo of the Houston Astros had been a Venezuela carjack victim. He was shot in the left arm. The wife of Tomas Perez, an infielder with the Philadelphia Phillies, had her SUV vandalized while going to see a pediatrician with their new baby.
Then there was Magglio Ordonez, a celebrity in his homeland as an All-Star outfielder for the White Sox. He, too, was accosted, according to Carrasquel.
"But lucky for Magglio," he says, "they recognized him, so they let him go."
Chico's own assailants were too young to recognize him or didn't give a damn. Paid him no honor as baseball royalty. Prince of the shortstops. Predecessor to a long line. A 10-season star in America's big leagues. The first Latin man to start in an All-Star Game.
In the resort city of Puerto la Cruz where tourists flock to the beaches, the 18,000-seat Estadio Alfonso "Chico" Carrasquel Stadium bears his name, the host to many a game.
Life has been very good for Carrasquel, but it also goes around and around, Chico's carousel.
He is now on dialysis three times a week. His sister administers the insulin shots daily for his diabetes.
"I know how sick I am," he says.
At lunch, his sister Maritza brings his plate, cuts his meat and potatoes. She is in Chicago from Venezuela on a six-month visa. Chico calls her "my chef, my nurse, my driver, my doctor, my family, my friend."
They grew up in poverty together—seven sisters, two brothers. Now they live together near 46th and Harlem, go to White Sox games together. It is just a team to some, a poor team at that. It is the team to Carrasquel. It always will be. It is his other family.
He says, "When I am feeling good, I go to see the White Sox. If I am feeling bad, I try to go to see the White Sox. It takes my mind from everything. I forget any troubles. I would rather be there than anywhere.
"Everything I have ever needed, the White Sox are here for me. It has been 50 years since I played for them, but still they are here for me."
In 1987, his house in Lawndale caught fire. A faulty heater. His wife got out in time. Their pet cats did not. The house burned to the ground.
He needed a helping hand. The White Sox were there.
Just as they were in 1950, when he became the man who put the "Chico" in Chicago.
In his way, he was a Jackie Robinson, breaking through a baseball barrier. A barrio barrier, you could say. Latin major-leaguers were rare. South American or Central American players in North America were all but invisible. From head to toe, the White Sox were white.
Branch Rickey and the Dodgers owned his contract. But they had shortstops galore, Pee Wee Reese among them.
Luke Appling had been in the Sox's 6-hole for 20 years. He was at least 43 years old (some said older) and still out there. The general manager, Frank Lane, had heard of Carrasquel. For one thing, Chico's uncle, Alex Carrasquel, had pitched in the Sox organization.
It took some doing, but Rickey relented and let the Sox have him. Not every teammate was thrilled. "How can we play a guy," one asked, "who can't speak English?"
Chico remembers responding, through an interpreter, "I didn't come here to talk."
He kept to himself. He learned how to say "Comiskey Park" to the taxi drivers. He learned "ham and eggs" and had it three meals a day. He created a wild scene in a restaurant when an angry waitress misunderstood Chico's request for a fork.
"The team would have meetings, three hours before the game. Long meetings," he says. "I did not understand one word. I would sit there and nod. Then I did what everyone else did. If they clap their hands, I clap my hands. If they stand up, I stand up."
Baseball he understood fine. As a rookie, he hit .282, which would be a career high. He wore uniform number 17, because "Alfonso Carrasquel" had 17 letters.
A year later, Chico handled 297 chances in the field without an error, an American League record. He beat out the league's reigning MVP, Phil Rizzuto of the Yankees, to be the 1951 All-Star starting shortstop in Detroit.
Magazines put him on the cover. He met two Presidents and movie stars. He did ads for Nokona gloves. A while back, the Detroit Tigers had tried to sign him in Venezuela by offering the poor kid a free glove. By 1951, he was giving gloves by the dozen to poor kids there, and his original one is in baseball's Hall of Fame.
Around goes the carousel. Exactly 50 years ago Monday, he was playing in the 1953 All-Star Game. He will be at Tuesday's game, at a park no longer named Comiskey, but on that same corner where the cab drivers would drop him.
An old friend from Venezuela who succeeded him as the White Sox shortstop (Luis Aparicio) will be the American League's honorary captain. A young friend from Venezuela (Ordonez) is on the team. At last count there were 38 Venezuelans in the majors. Once, there was one.
"Where I am from, the White Sox are every boy's team," Chico says. "For some maybe the Yankees are best, but in Venezuela, no."
And other things back home?
Not good. A few weeks after Chico was attacked, a boxing champion, super-flyweight Alexander Munoz, 24, was out jogging when he was jumped by three men and shot in the leg.
A workers' strike, a paralyzed economy, oil shipments cut off, travel visas denied, a political revolt …Venezuela has been in turmoil. Even all baseball was suspended there at one point, saddening Chico no end. No baseball? A crowd he estimates at 150,000 met him at the Caracas airport after his 1951 season. Then, the mobs cheered. Now, the mobs rob.
"I have to go back," he insists. "It is a part of me. I will always go there." There … and to a baseball park in Chicago.
Where he can run into his old friend and teammate Minnie Minoso and trade insults. Where he can sit with his young friend Mina Pineda, who works for the White Sox, and converse in Spanish over lunch. Where he can forget his troubles.
Like that bad fall he took recently in a stadium men's room. Or like finding out weeks after the fact about the death of Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, for whom he was traded to Cleveland back in 1955 (which took Chico out of Chicago).
Robbed. Beaten. Old friends gone. In poor health. Yes, for Alfonso Carrasquel, all this is true.
But he knows what to do.
"I watch the White Sox."
How perfect—17 letters.
