- Happ helps Phillies beat Brewers, reduce magic number to four
- Phillies Notebook: No early celebrations from Phillies
- Paul Hagen: How about Walker as solution to Phillies' mess at closer?
- Phillies at Brewers preview
- Paul Hagen: Film offers insightful look into challenges facing Latin ballplayers
- Reds sweep Pirates, if anyone cares
- Tigers defeat struggling Indians to inch closer to division title
- 3 WINNERS
- WEEKLINGS
- High Cheese
- GALLERY: 2009 Phillies
- GALLERY: 2008 World Series champs
- PDF: Seating at Citizens Bank Park
- PDF: Schedule
- PDF: Ticket prices and sales
RELATED STORIES
Paul Hagen: Film offers insightful look into challenges facing Latin ballplayers
Pedro Martinez bounced the pitch. Catcher Carlos Ruiz recovered the ball quickly and fired a strike to Pedro Feliz at third, who tagged out the Mets runner trying to advance for the final out of the eighth inning.
And even more remarkable than the fact that manager Charlie Manuel allowed his 37-year-old starter to throw 130 pitches that night was that the play involved three Latin players. Martinez and Feliz are from the Dominican Republic, Ruiz is a native of Panama.
It's hard to believe but as recently as 1989, the only Latin player the Phillies had all season was Juan Samuel . . . and he was traded in June.
All of which leads us to a terrific movie that has just been released on DVD. At its most basic level, "Sugar" is the fictitious story of Miguel Santos, a gifted young pitcher from San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic, whose nickname is "Sugar" or Azucar in Spanish, as he chases his dream of making it to the big leagues.
But the rich subtext is a realistic examination of the tug-of-war between the hope of making it big and fear of failure that these players face, all while having to cope with the language barrier and adjusting to an alien culture.
"I think it's very real, very close to what we normally go through, especially in the first stages of our arrival in the United States," Martinez, who attended the opening night for the film in the Dominican, says in one of the bonus scenes.
In one haunting bit of screen verite, former major leaguer Jose Rijo plays the role of a big-league team's representative in Latin America. Rijo, of course, was a special assistant to Nationals general manager Jim Bowden who ran the club's Dominican academy before both resigned this spring after becoming entangled in the Latin bonus-skimming scandal.
At one point, a prospect tells Santos that the fictitious Kansas City Knights have offered him a contract. Santos, played by Algenis Perez Soto, asks how much they're willing to pay. The kid says it's $115,000 but adds, almost offhandedly, that his agent will take $40,000 of it.
Anybody who watches this movie will come away with a deeper appreciation of what the Latin players go through just to get a chance to play baseball.
The hot corner
-- Former Diamondbacks ace Brandon Webb, injured all year, said that if the team wants him to restructure his $8.5 million option for next year, they can forget it. "No, I'm not interested in doing that," he said flatly.
-- At a time when most teams who move their spring-training sites go from Florida to Arizona, the Cubs are threatening to leave Mesa, Ariz., for Naples, Fla., if they don't get the new complex they're demanding.
Cheers
For major league journeyman Pete Orr. Now with the Nationals, the 30-year-old will not go home when the season ends a week from Sunday. He'll report to Washington's spring-training base in Viera, Fla., and begin to learn how to catch.
He's never done it before. But team officials asked him if he'd like to give it a try and he jumped at the chance.
"Anything to give myself a better chance to be in the big leagues, I'll do it at the drop of a hat," he explained.
And if he doesn't make it, at least Orr will know that he did everything he could possibly do.
