How Latinos influenced Willie McCovey’s path to the majors
By Adrian Burgos
Baseball lost a giant with the death of Willie McCovey on Oct. 31. McCovey, a power-hitting first baseman who played with the San Francisco Giants for 19 of his 22 major league seasons, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in July of 1986.
The slugger’s path from Mobile, Ala., to Cooperstown included many connections to and relationships with Latinos. Together, they changed baseball as part of the game’s pioneering generation.
Giant Friends
Coming up through the Giants’ farm system and joining the big league club in 1959, McCovey formed lifelong friendships with some of the era’s biggest Latino stars: Felipe Alou, Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda.
Alou and McCovey got to know each other particularly well. The two lived as roommates during their minor-league days in Phoenix and, later, while playing winter ball in the Dominican Republic.
In fact, sensitivity to McCovey’s bout with homesickness while playing for Escogido in the Dominican league prompted a still single Alou to leave his parents’ home and share an apartment with McCovey for the remainder of the winter season.
“We had a great relationship. Incredible friend and player and individual,” Alou told Janie McCauley of The Associated Press. “I have so many good memories.”
While the two were roommates in Phoenix, Alou admonished McCovey for spending too much money on the stylish Florsheim or Stacy Adams shoes “Willie Mac” loved to wear.
“You quit buying cheap shoes, Felipe,” McCovey responded. “You and I are going to make money in the big leagues.”
Alou recounted in his recently published autobiography how McCovey’s words instilled confidence in him. If a rising star like McCovey saw Alou making it, then the Dominican surely must have what it takes to become a big leaguer, he thought.
The friendship they shared remains powerful. Although the 83-year-old Alou is still recuperating from three surgeries over the past three months, he is making the trip to California to attend the memorial and funeral service for McCovey.
Scouting for Giants
In 1959, McCovey joined a Giants team that featured Willie Mays and rising Latino stars Cepeda and Alou. Marichal joined them a year later. All these players had one man in common in their quest to become Giants: Cuban-American Alex Pompez.
The Giants hired Pompez in 1950 to scout talent in the Caribbean and in the Negro Leagues. This was familiar terrain for him. Pompez, a Negro League team owner from 1916 until his New York Cubans team disbanded in 1950, had signed players from throughout the Americas, including stars Martin Dihigo, Orestes Miñoso and Horacio Martínez.
In his 1986 Hall of Fame induction speech, McCovey acknowledged the role Pompez played as he became a Giant and also spoke of those who paved the way for him.
“There are some other people I can’t help but to remember fondly on this day. … I am thinking of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line and made our dreams of becoming a major leaguer a reality. … I am thinking of Jesse Thomas, a playground director in Mobile who arranged a tryout in front of the Giants scouts down in Melbourne. And the late scout Alex Pompez and Mr. Jack Schwarz, who together signed me to my first contract.”
A Giant Relief
Thomas discovered McCovey playing baseball in the Mobile sandlots. Thomas worked as part of Pompez’s network of birddog scouts who spotted promising talent and alerted him to take a closer look.
The two had a relationship that dated back to the Negro Leagues when his brother Dave “Showboat” Thomas played as a smooth-fielding first baseman (hence his nickname) for Pompez’s Cubans in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Pompez liked what he initially saw and invited McCovey to the Giants’ minor-league tryout camp in Melbourne, Fla. McCovey recounted those feelings in an article for the Daily Review out of Hayward, Calif. on March 31, 1974.
Away from home and still just 17 years-old, the strapping prospect worried about failing to make the needed impression at the tryout camp. The Giants’ staff’s daily evaluation meeting was a nervous time. African American and Latino prospects knew it fell on Pompez’s shoulders to inform them that they had been released following these meetings.
“I was scared to death. … There were a lot of good ballplayers in that tryout camp: Orlando Cepeda, Jay Alou and José Pagán. I figured I’d soon be on a bus back to Mobile.”
His anxiety only increased as the end of camp neared. Players were either assigned to a minor-league team or sent home. McCovey feared the worst when Pompez appeared at his door with “that look.”
“Why don’t you hit?” McCovey recalled Pompez asking.
“I don’t know. I’m trying. I’m doing the best I can,” he responded.
Then Pompez delivered the news: “You got a contract. … You’ve been disappointing here, but we’re going to take a chance. We know you have potential.”
From San Francisco to Cooperstown
In the four seasons McCovey spent in the Giants’ minor-league system he formed relationships with Latino teammates from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.
Playing in cities where Jim Crow segregation reigned had the effect of bonding him with his Latino teammates. They often looked to him for guidance. The relationships they formed continued throughout his Hall of Fame career and into retirement.
Marichal was McCovey’s teammate the entire time the Dominican native played for the Giants. The two shared lots of time together, not just in San Francisco but also as part of the Hall of Fame.
On induction weekends when McCovey was able to attend, one could find the Giants players—Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Marichal, and Gaylord Perry—reminiscing about their playing days, swapping stories, sharing memories.
In an interview with La Vida Baseball, Marichal reflected on the health problems that plagued McCovey since the latter part of his playing career.
“It’s sad that a man who gave so much to baseball suffered so much after his retirement with physical problems,” Marichal said.
Marichal’s thoughts on McCovey went beyond his prowess on the field. “He was a great human being. Great. Special. A man I never heard complaining, never said anything negative against another person, another player, another human being. He was a very special person.”
“It is a sad day for the Giants family,” Marichal said, “very painful.”
Editor’s note: For more on the relationship between Willie McCovey and Alex Pompez, check out Adrian’s book Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball. Read an excerpt here.
Featured Image: Teenie Harris Archive / Carnegie Museum of Art