Back to the Homeland with El Profe: Day One
By Adrian Burgos
Editor’s Note: This week La Vida Baseball is in Puerto Rico. El Profe, Adrian Burgos, Jr, and a team are spending time with current and former major leaguers, families and the next generations of baseball players from the island. For El Profe this trip is a homecoming.
Day One: The Arrival
The passengers cheered as we touched down at Luis Muñoz Marin Airport in San Juan. It’s been a tradition for passengers to celebrate safe arrival in Puerto Rico for well over half a century—basically since air travel to and from the island began.
The sound of clapping and cheering comforted me.
I didn’t know what exactly to expect when we boarded the plane in Chicago in the morning. This is my first time back to Puerto Rico since Hurricane María had devastated the island last September.
Emotions welled up as I looked out the window on our approach to the airport. A few blue tarps were visible, substituting for roofs over houses that had been damaged. But I realize San Juan was not hit as hard as other parts of the island; there will be more to see over the next five days. We have quite an itinerary for the coming week.
But for me, this is a baseball pilgrimage.
La Vida Baseball will be spending a day in Carolina with the Clemente family in Carolina, visiting with Doña Vera Clemente and her son Luis. We will also visit the family of Justino Clemente, Roberto’s older brother, who I met earlier this fall when I served as his interpreter during his first visit to the National Baseball Hall of Fame organized by Roberto Alomar.
The La Vida team will also spend a day in Caguas, a town rich in Puerto Rican baseball history made all the more significant as the hometown of Álex Cora. How Caguas has recovered has special meaning for me; it is the town where my mother was born and lived until she migrated to New York City as a young teenager in the 1950s.
Before we began our week crisscrossing the northern parts of the island interviewing players from Little League teams to retired major leaguers, we had to capture one of the things that earned Puerto Rico the name “La Isla del Encanto” (Island of Enchantment): sunset near El Morro Castle.
Check back every day this week for more photos and stories from MY adventures in Puerto Rico.
Featured Image: La Vida Baseball
Inset Images: La Vida Baseball