Dominican diary: Even more on Cabrera

As I blog, the host team Aguilas is taking apart the Yaquis team from Mexico, which is thankfully a game I do not have to write about. I covered the afternoon game between Aragua and Licey, which was a better game than expected, and handed off the nightcap to our fine reporter Jesse Sanchez, who has this game firmly under control even if his luggage is in parts unknown. He’s also blogging.

I can confirm that the atmosphere for a game here is like nowhere else. For a stadium that seats around 18,000 (not including standing room), it sounds like twice that much when Aguilas gets going. The noise is just about constant, including enough horns to rival a morning rush hour in Manhattan. As I write, there’s a guy with a bullhorn leading cheers behind home plate, and I think he just brought the bullhorn on his own.

Even away from the ballpark, it’s huge. I woke up this morning to
the blaring sound of a pickup trucks with two giant speakers in the
back. It kept playing an advertisement telling fans they could watch
the Caribbean Series on the big screen from the hotel.

Those who don’t have horns are either waving flags or banging thunder sticks, which are orange. Comerica Park had the white-out effect from those rally towels in ’06. This place has enough thunder sticks going to look like a bunch of cheese puffs waving around. Yes, I was very hungry when I thought of that.

Anyway …

• I spent most of the pregame in and around the Aragua squad talking about the challenge they face with so many players lost, so Miguel Cabrera was bound to come up. The word from a few teammates and a reporter who follows the squad is that it indeed was a left quadriceps injury, and that it was minor. It didn’t affect him at the plate, but it slowed him noticeably when he was running. Nobody seemed particularly worried about it, though admittedly Aragua had their own situation to worry about.
• As for the weight issue, one person who follows the club backed up the reports about Cabrera’s weight loss, now possibly up to 20 pounds.
• Freddy Guzman indeed started in center tonight for Aguilas, the tournament favorite, and had an RBI double batting ninth. I wouldn’t compare him to Nook Logan or Alex Sanchez. He might be more like Andres Torres when he was younger. He’s fast, but it’s in small, quick steps, which fits his small frame.
• A very frustrating effort for ex-Tiger Jose Capellan today, with four hits and four walks allowed over five innings in the start for Licey. He was swatting at the ball to catch it coming back at him from the catcher after walking Aragua’s first batter of the game, which can’t ever be a good sign for a pitcher that early.
• I forgot to mention another Tiger at this series, simply because I didn’t know until I finally made my way to the Licey clubhouse after the game. Chris Macdonald, the athletic trainer at Double-A Erie, is in his fourth winter working in the Dominican. His season here started in October, and he’ll go from working this series straight to work in Lakeland, where once he’s done helping unpack the Tigers’ equipment truck, it’ll be all-out until early September. It’s a rough schedule, but he loves it, which is why he keeps coming back. "These people are great," he said. "They treat me as well as anybody down here."
• Remember that night in 2006 when a Michigan gubernatorial candidate was in the TV booth for a home game and the Tigers lost badly? Well, as much as politics and baseball mix here, they might have the same effect. When Dominican president Leonel Fernandez came into the press box to talk with the media, Licey had a 5-1 lead. By the time he was finished, Licey was holding on for dear life. There’s a presidential election coming up here in a few months between three main candidates, and their advertising is all over the place.
• You know you’re in a different experience as a reporter when the work room offers up rum and coke … at the start of the game. And no, I didn’t take any, so you’ll have to find another reason for this rambling blog. They serve rum and beer in the press box, but not food, so maybe it was starvation.