La Vida Voices: Fernando Pérez

On Sept. 5, 2008, Fernando Pérez joined Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Eddie Collins on the short list of baseball players who have made it from Columbia University to the big leagues. Pérez, a seventh round pick of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2004, made his major league debut that night, becoming the first Latino Ivy Leaguer in Major League Baseball history.

A September call-up, the switch-hitting outfielder participated in Tampa Bay’s 2008 World Series run. The rookie appeared throughout the playoffs — in the ALDS versus the White Sox, against the Boston Red Sox in the ALCS, and as a pinch-runner in the Game 5 loss to the Phillies. A wrist injury sidelined Pérez for much of the 2009 season. The following year Pérez accompanied Matt Garza to the Chicago Cubs in a blockbuster trade that also included prospects Chris Archer, Robinson Chirinos, and Brandon Guyer.

Pérez majored in American Studies at Columbia University with an emphasis on creative writing. His off-field work as a writer started during his playing days when he wrote several pieces for the “Bats” blog for the New York Times during the 2009 season while recovering from his wrist injury. Pérez has appeared as a baseball analyst for MLB.com’s “The Dugout” and as an on-camera personality for Viceland and Bleacher Report. He also writes his “Recovering Ballplayer” column for Vice.com.

Each summer Pérez returns to Columbia University to teach a course for The School of the New York Times NYC Summer Academy. He took time from teaching his summer course to talk with La Vida Baseball about his baseball journey, life as a major leaguer, and writing on sports.

Adrian Burgos: What sparked your love of baseball? Was it something passed down through your family?

Fernando Pérez: My parents are Cuban-born baby boomers, and when we moved to the burbs from Brooklyn they chose the house next to the town’s Little League field. Maybe it was inevitable. I grew up at that field at a time when baseball fields were meeting places where even kids who didn’t necessarily play baseball were there to hang out. … Insane amounts of nostalgia tied to that place — R.J. Ward Little League Field in West Windsor, New Jersey.  Playing games, watching games, announcing games—the best memories perhaps. I probably had my first smooch there. And eventually, when we were too big to play there, we threw parties in the dugouts.  Probably ran from the cops for the first time there too.

AB: Who was your favorite player(s) during your youth? What team did you root for? What was your favorite baseball memory as a fan growing up?

FP: My Little League All-Star team had Oakland A’s colors. Most everyone was Caucasian, and I was very black. So Dave Stewart was the black Barbie I reached for. I wore my hat like him and I think most of the white kids fell for the intimidating stare of his I emulated. … Usually worked the first time through the lineup.

My folks were Yankee fans so I fell in line—through the bad years when there was no Red Sox nation or Yankee universe. When Yankee fandom exploded I was a bit turned off—I think I wanted a salary cap. My most vivid fan memory is being way too young to understand heckling while sitting in the bleachers at the old stadium in front of some dudes heckling Don Mattingly with all of their energy. I can still hear “Get a haircut, you wimp!” every time he came to bat. I remember thinking “he can’t hear you” and wondering “what’s so bad about a mullet?” — my dad had a afro-let. I wonder where those guys are today. I hope they don’t have kids.

AB: You played with the Devil Rays and also in the Cubs and New York Mets organizations. As an Afro-Cuban-American, how did you deal with cultural differences and language in the clubhouse and on the field?

FP: When the team plays well, casual racism is more or less rounded with humor.  Awkward, layered humor. When the team sucks, casual racism sours and smells horrible.  On one hand, you have Latino players who are not only struggling to assimilate, but who are also sensing they are unwelcome, and must do more than play the game well. At the other extreme are/were American players who often feel threatened and have no real incentive to understand where Latino players are coming from if they are different or even a bit rough around the edges.  You have a mediocre player who goes in the third round out of a big school who did not read the right books or meet the right people to understand why his Latino teammate does not behave the way he was taught to behave on the very nice fields and facilities at his big school.

Baseball has been haunted by a lot of sloppy ideas of what is the right way to play or act. Much of this is eroding with each passing day. Any given team has all sorts of combinations of players along the spectrum of willing and unwilling, interested and uninterested in getting along and coming together.  We often forget this is not really a team sport but an individual one organized in team tasks and concepts. Sometimes a team is beautiful and sometimes it’s horrible. I learned a lot, but there is no neat resolution here. Being in the middle helped me learn a lot about people, but I can’t say this really helped me do anything on the field.

With all of my privilege, I was able to see what was happening but again, that’s an option available to some, taken by few.  It was easy to understand why Latino players often mistrusted American players and coaches, and it was easy to see why American players felt more entitled to their space.  Two thousand nineteen is proof that there are folks who are less busy trying to learn how to stay through a slider, who are still struggling with the American experiment, so there’s no reason to expect that ball players, who are only incentivized to play baseball better, would be any more successful to this end.  More successful and universally accepted Latino players —as well as more cultured and warm American players—push the issue; not only are young Latino players more supported from the day they sign, it has gradually become less “cool” to give them a hard time. I think the culture has improved by force, by the sheer numbers of Latino players playing exceptionally well … in my opinion that begat tolerance, not the other way around.

AB: Your journey has taken you from the Ivy League to Major League Baseball and now to reporting for Bleacher Report and other outlets. What have been some of the challenges of going from the baseball field to working in journalism?

FP: Playing a sport is disfiguring. Everyone struggles with moving on, whether you read the New Yorker or can’t really read.  It takes a while to actually admit defeat and reset to being that 21 year-old who didn’t get drafted and has to take on the regular world, like everyone else.

AB: As a creative writer and Columbia University graduate, what makes for a good story for you in covering sports, such as covering soccer fan traditions in Argentina or across Europe in the Champions League?

FP: I think sports stories are mostly trash.  We are drowning in gutless branded content. If you want access to teams and players you have to essentially agree to do PR for them. If you’re somewhat creative you can still make something that isn’t nauseatingly fake, and while that’s mostly a fun challenge to me, I must admit I am living for the mostly unseen experiences on the job — things said off the record between takes, weird scenes in the underbellies of stadiums, talking with non-fans in cities who can’t wait for the streets to be free of fans.

Though entitlement is a feature of every fan base in every sport, at least in Europe, fans can typically be bothered to support their teams during the entirety of the actual game they are attending.  In America, baseball fans are spectators who mostly cheer when the team pleases them. We are occasionally moved to put down the burgers and soda to wave a towel, but in Munich, Paris or Amsterdam you have supporters too busy actively cheering to eat, who might watch their team concede a goal but won’t miss a single note of the song they’re currently singing to support them.

AB: Thanks Fernando for sharing your story of moving from the Ivy League to the big leagues and your thoughts on sports writing. Fans can follow Fernando Pérez @ifernandoperez.