LOS ANGELES – So what happens when the best day of your life is also the worst day of your life?
Sunday should have been a day of total triumph for Eliezer Alfonzo. After nine minor league seasons, he had finally gotten the call to the big leagues, and Sunday was not only his first game in a major league uniform but he was in the lineup as the Dodgers’ starting catcher.
That all happened, but it didn’t go nearly as planned. Earlier Sunday, he learned that his sister Eliana and his stepmother Patricia, who had been reported missing in the twin 7-plus magnitude earthquakes that rocked Venezuela June 24, had died.
Word spread quickly. The first time Alfonzo stepped to the plate, with one out in the third inning of Sunday’s 5-2 loss to San Diego, the fans gave him a standing ovation. They understood, seemingly, that this young man bore an even greater burden than a player reaching this level for the first time after years of waiting.
Alfonzo’s father, also named Eliezer, was a Venezuelan League MVP and played parts of seven seasons in the major leagues with the Giants, Padres, Mariners and Rockies (and, for a while, was a teammate of current Dodgers manager Dave Roberts).
Alfonzo turns 27 in September and had spent nine seasons and 581 games in the minors when he received the news Saturday that he was being called up from Triple-A Oklahoma City.
He’d signed with the Dodgers as a minor league free agent last winter and was recalled to replace Chucky Robinson as Dalton Rushing’s backup while Will Smith remains on the injured list.
And this was haunting. After Sunday’s game, in which Alfonzo went 0 for 2 and played seven innings before Tommy Edman pinch-hit for him, he met reporters when it would have been just as easy for him to skip post-game interviews to grieve. And he gave this answer, the only question he answered in English, when asked what Eliana would have thought about him making his major league debut:
“This is a tough moment, because like three weeks ago she told me that she had a beautiful dream but she wasn’t going to tell me anything until the dream came true. I’m pretty sure the dream was something about this and I wish she was alive to watch me playing in the big leagues. I know she’s on God’s side now and she’s going to protect me and she is going to enjoy every moment that I’m going to have outside playing.”
It was no accident, surely, that Alfonzo’s locker was right next to that of fellow Venezuelan Miguel Rojas, whose wife and children were visiting relatives in Caracas when the earthquakes hit but were safe.
“I know for a fact if Eliezer could be there (in Venezuela) with his dad, he would be,” Rojas said. “But I mean, we are professional baseball players. We are trying to go after a dream that is not just our dream. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way. This is the dream of his sister, his father, his whole family, and he’s been working really hard to get this opportunity.
“And I’m just proud of the way that he kind of like approached everything that happened today to him. But at the same time, it’s really hard to put this moment into context, because it’s never easy to lose a family member, especially when something like that happened. And all we can do right here as a club is be here for him and kind of like lift him up in these tough moments.”
So how do you handle the demands of your job in the face of a family tragedy?
“I went out there to honor my sister and my stepmother,” Alfonzo said in Spanish. “I tried to do my best in a difficult moment.”
He said he’d talked to his father and brother in Venezuela, and when asked if he’d considered not playing, he said he felt their support of his decision to play. His agent and his girlfriend here have also tried to help him navigate things, as has the guy at the next locker.
“It has been a very difficult moment, because we are here and we continue to work and we keep doing our jobs,” Rojas said. “But in reality, our hearts and our thoughts are in Venezuela.
“It has been ten very hard days, because even when it doesn’t affect you directly and your family members are fine, in reality, not everything is fine, because there are many people who are suffering from this terrible tragedy and we really hope that the people affected directly find the strength to move forward.”
It’s a conflict, for sure, between the job and what’s happening on the ground back home.
“That’s the worst feeling,” Rojas said. “Feeling selfish, like being here and playing and we look out there like we’re having fun and we’re laughing, and at the end when I put my head to bed after everything is over, after the show is over, it’s really hard to go to sleep. And I’m pretty sure a lot of Venezuelans are going through the same thing.”
But, even after personal tragedies such as the deaths of his parents and his grandmother, he said, “I never stopped playing. And the only reason why is because this is what I do for a living, and this is how I make a lot of people happy in my family … This is not just my job. This is who I am.
“And I feel like … that’s the best advice or the best teaching lesson that I can leave when I get done playing this game, because I know a lot of people (are) gonna go through tough moments. But at the same time, you can always show up, play, work … get some moments so it can take you away from things that are happening at home.”
And sometimes the work can be a necessary distraction.
“I lost my father in spring training, right at the end,” Roberts recalled. “And you just gotta keep going and get ready for the season. And it’s not easy. You’re still a human, and family is everything. But players are wired some weird, crazy way to kind of keep going forward and compartmentalize (even with) something that’s so fresh and raw. And you can’t be there, that’s what’s heartbreaking.
“I’m sure he has a lot of support and I hope to see his father at some point and give him a big hug and I know he wants to give his son a big hug. But yeah, that’s real-life stuff.”
jalexander@scng.com