Thursday, January 13, 2000

Perez: From Cuba to Hall

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Patience was best weapon vs. adversity

BY CHRIS HAFT
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tony Perez and Carlton Fisk pose with their rookie cards at a New York press conference Wednesday. (AP photos) | ZOOM |

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        NEW YORK — Tony Perez fell into bed but couldn't sleep when he arrived at a midtown Manhattan hotel at 4 a.m. Wednesday. The thrill of being elected to baseball's Hall of Fame hours earlier kept the Reds legend awake. Yet the memories of his long journey from Cuba to Cooperstown also jarred him.

        A mildly reflective Perez joined fellow Hall of Fame inductee Carlton Fisk for the traditional day-after-election news conference. Except for appearing a tad bleary-eyed, Perez seemed fresh enough to step in the batter's box and hit a ball to Times Square.

        “I look great,” Perez said, shrugging off his sleepless night with some humorous vanity. “I didn't want to go to sleep anyway. I didn't want to wake up and see it was a dream.”

        Perez's baseball career occasionally seemed nightmarish. Perez's rough times included adjusting to a new culture upon joining the Reds' Geneva, N.Y., farm team in 1960 and leaving the only organization he knew when Cincinnati traded him to Montreal after the 1976 season.

        Perez overcame every obstacle and disappointment with his dignified, quiet diligence.

Perez and Fisk pose in Hall of Fame jerseys. | ZOOM |

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        “If you know his favorite phrase — "See the ball, hit the ball' — he works through doing,” said Perez's older son, 33-year-old Victor, who attended the news conference. “That's the way he has worked all his life. That's the way he taught us. By being an example.”

        Perez needed examples when he left his native Cuba to become a Reds minor-leaguer. Lacking basic knowledge of English made the game he loved suddenly foreign.

        “To hear words like "cutoff man,' "go to first,' "go to third,' things like that ... I had to learn how to play the game in English,” said Perez, now a special assistant to the general manager with the Florida Marlins.

        The language barrier hounded “Doggie” off the field, especially when he felt hungry.

        “A lot happened when I went to a restaurant and somebody gave me the menu,” he said. “I used to point at it (to order a meal). Sometimes I was lucky and sometimes I wasn't. One time I pointed for a lunch and got apple pie.”

        Perez said Dave Bristol, one of his first minor-league managers who later managed Cincinnati “taught me how to win.” Once Perez reached the majors in 1964, he was treated to the sight of Frank Robinson's daily hustle. Said Perez: “I learned a lot from him, the way he approached it. Pete Rose, too. When you play with guys like that, you learn a lot.”

        Becoming an All-Star with the Reds wasn't enough, as Perez learned in late 1976 when Bob Howsam, then Cincinnati's general manager, told him that he intended to trade him if the right deal arose. Dan Driessen, nine years younger and more than $100,000 cheaper at a time when few players earned six-figure incomes, was deemed ready to inherit first base.

        As a player with at least 10 years' experience who had spent the previous five seasons with the same team, Perez could veto any trade. He asked Howsam to send him to a contending club. “He said, "You can make any team a contender,'” Perez recalled. “I said, "Then why are you trading me?' I didn't understand that.”

        Afterward, the most notable sting Perez absorbed was his dismissal after 44 games as Reds manager in 1993. Though this wound since has healed, he said, “I think that was the most negative thing I went through.” His family knew how much he suffered as his vote total fell short of the 75 percent required for induction in the eight previous Hall of Fame elections. Said Victor, a Xavier University graduate who works here in real estate and telecommunications: “You could feel the anxiety. I mean, he's human.”

        He was also Tony Perez, who waited for the Hall of Fame the same way he waited for the right pitch.

        “He was like he felt when he played,” Victor Perez said. “Very patient.”

       

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