Baseball v. Fascism? From Argentina to the United States

 I have always been a baseball fan and, in the course of my guidebook-writing career in the Southern Cone countries, I would often say that I left home when the World Series ended and returned for Opening Day. This wasn’t quite literally true, but it did mean that I had something to occupy my time in the Northern Hemisphere when nothing was happening on the diamond (a truly appropriate description of any baseball field, including this unexpected gem in the Argentine city of Salta).

The Argentine city of Salta has a new baseball stadium, but this older diamond was still a gem.

In mid-1981, when my wife first arrived in the United States from Argentina—a country in which baseball is still a fringe sport—she immediately took to Fernando Valenzuela, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mexican pitcher who served as a symbol of inclusion in her new home country. It helped, of course, that I was a Dodgers fan since my childhood—since the early Jackie Robinson years—and we have maintained that loyalty toward what has long been baseball’s most admirable franchise. By signing Robinson, the Dodgers had led the way in crossing the “color line” that had excluded black players from Major League Baseball.

 

Dodger Stadium, where the legendary Fernando Valenzuela began his career.

That progress, however, hasn’t been without setbacks. The Dodgers won the World Series in 2024, and that victory came with an invitation to visit the White House that has been traditional since 1924. Many of us hoped that the team would decline the invitation to interact with an occupant (who shall remain nameless here) whose loathsome public persona, including overt racism, was unpleasant at best. Then, however, we could at least rationalize that the visit was part of a longstanding apolitical tradition.

 

Argentina's military dictatorship kidnapped and murdered my future brother-in-law's first wife in 1976.

That rationalization is no longer tenable, if it ever was. It’s truly disheartening, in face of this regime’s assault on civil liberties—resorting to widespread kidnapping, prison camps, and even summary public executions—to think that the Dodgers would once again honor the current occupant with their presence. It’s worth adding here that my future brother-in-law’s first wife, María Eugenia Sanllorenti, was kidnapped in the Argentine city of La Plata and then murdered. It was more than three decades before forensic experts identified her remains.

 

The Argentine dictatorship abducted Maru from this apartment in the city of La Plata in 1976.

The last straw, here, should be the White House’s grotesque caricature of former President Barack Obama (this country’s first black President) and his wife Michelle as apes in the jungle. What would Jackie Robinson say? Perhaps someone in the Dodgers ownership should ask Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s 103-year-old widow and head of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, her opinion.

 

At the very least, the Dodgers could decline the invitation with a statement saying “We did that last year, thank you.” Then we could wholeheartedly cheer for the Dodgers’ third consecutive championship—a three-peat—in 2026.

 

Should the Dodgers decline the invitation, they could face backlash from a vengeful White House that went ballistic over Bad Bunny's Super Bowl half-time show, which celebrated the culture of Puerto Rico—a territory whose inhabitants are US citizens—and other Latin American peoples. There's at least one Dodger who would almost certainly boycott an invitation—the charismatic utility infielder/outfielder Enrique (Kiké) Hernández is a Boricua who was an enthusiastic presence at Sunday's game and halftime show. Relief pitcher Edwin Díaz is also Puerto Rican.

As US citizens, both of them would have little to risk by declining the invitation. However, the Dodgers also have players from Cuba, the Dominican Republic Venezuela, Japan, and South Korea who could conceivably have their work visas revoked by a vengeful White House. There are many more in the Dodgers' minor league system, so this could wreak true havoc.

Post-Script: I just realized this is my first blog entry in more than three years. I'm not traveling quite so much now, though there is a new edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, and I'll try offer my insights a bit more frequently.

Monday Musings - Mar del Plata, Money and Baseball

Today’s entry will be a potpourri about Argentina and sports. It ranges from the serious (the effect of Argentina’s Dirty War on my wife’s family) to the utilitarian (money and exchange rates) to the whimsical (my own tenuous link between baseball and Patagonia).

Southward Bound

Maru Sanllorenti's hometown of Tandil

As I prepare to head to Buenos Aires, early next month, my wife María Laura Massolo and our daughter Clío are already there (but will return to California before I leave). Their trip is partly vacation but also a family mission, as the remains of my brother-in-law’s first wife—a victim of Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship—have been transferred from her hometown of Tandil to a new Panteón de la Memoria (Pantheon of Memory) in the Cementerio de La Loma in the coastal resort city of Mar del Plata.

My brother-in-law's first wife disappeared shortly after giving birth in 1976.

Maru's mother Eva and son Manuel at Mar del Plata's Panteón de la Memoria (photo by María Laura Massolo)

Abducted on the street in the Buenos Aires Province capital of La Plata in 1976, Maru Sanllorenti is survived by family members that include her mother Eva (now aged 94) and her son (my nephew) Manuel (now 43), who was an infant when she disappeared. My wife accompanied her brother Carlos (Manuel’s father) to Mardel for the ceremony there, then returned almost immediately to Buenos Aires, where Clío arrived on Friday. Yesterday, both of them attended a talk that Manuel regularly gives to visiting tour groups at the city’s Parque de la Memoria, which includes a commemorative plaque with his mother’s name.

Manuel Massolo (right) recounts his mother's story to visiting US tourists at the Parque de la  Memoria.

Money Matters

I haven’t been to Argentina since last year and, consequently, my recent information on exchange rates, prices, and transactions has been mostly second-hand. Since last month’s elections, though, exchange rates have remained relatively stable, and my wife informs me that a fine Peruvian dinner for three at downtown’s Chan Chan cost about US$10 per person, including three entrees plus a beer per person. It’s not an elite restaurant by Buenos Aires standards, but that’s still excellent value.

Our neighborhood cueva, on Palermo's Cabello street, was closed on the weekend.

Changing money, though, always requires reorientation. Bank lines are long, exchange houses are mostly downtown, and there’s still a difference between formal and blue (informal) rates. The difference isn’t huge, though, and the informal exchange houses known as cuevas are fewer than they once were. My wife has used the one near our apartment in Palermo, which remains open, but Dan Perlman of Casa Saltshaker informs me that street changers have taken over the business near his apartment (including the weekend’s Plaza Francia crafts fair outside the Cementerio de la Recoleta). Street-changing, of course, holds potential risk for the inexperienced—not the least of which is counterfeit currency.

It’s possible to change at ATMs, but that has its own issues—on the weekend, when our neighborhood cueva was closed, my wife paid a bank charge of US$10 to withdraw approximately US$50 from the machine. I’m not sure what the maximum withdrawal is at the moment, but it’s almost certainly low by international standards. In Chile, I regularly withdraw the equivalent of US$300 per transaction, but Argentina has been roughly half that—making the service charge a true burden.

Baseball and Patagonia

I love baseball and, for decades now, I’ve enjoyed saying that I leave for South America after the World Series and return in time for Opening Day. This year, I’m still stateside, through two weeks without baseball, but I’m looking forward to being back in Buenos Aires (where I’ve played the game myself) in another fortnight.

Actually, the month of October was a big disappointment, as my own Los Angeles Dodgers fell to the mild card (sic) Washington Nationals in the National League Division Series, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention the subsequent rounds or the World Series itself. The Dodgers were clearly the NL’s best but, as they say, anything can happen in a short series. Of all major sports, baseball is probably the likeliest for a lesser team to prevail—there’s really no such thing as an upset.

The top three finishers in the National League's Most Valuable Player voting

Last week, though, the post-season individual awards drew my attention because of a friendly rivalry with my Wisconsin-born but Chile-based friend Todd Temkin, who’s a diehard Milwaukee Brewers fan (his Cerveceros lost to Washington in a one-game playoff for the right to meet the Dodgers). Todd (who splits his time between Valparaíso/Viña del Mar and a farm in Futaleufú) and I disagree on who’s the NL’s best player; his choice is Milwaukee outfielder Christian Yelich, while mine is LA’s versatile outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger.

Dinner will probably take place at Futaleufú's Martín Pescador.

Hand-written menu at Martín Pescador

On one level, that’s a subjective judgement, as they’re both elite players, but Todd suggested that we place a bet on the Most Valuable Player award, “given to a player in each league who has contributed the most to the success of a player’s team,” according to the Baseball Writers Association of America. Depending on which player scored most highly in that poll, the loser would treat the winner to dinner—probably at Futaleufú’s Martín Pescador, with its frequently changing menu.

On my last visit, I enjoyed gnocchi with morels...

and a cheesecake for dessert.

As it happened, Bellinger edged out Yelich for the award, while Anthony Rendón of the champion Nationals came in a respectable third (the vote takes place at the end of the regular season, so the Nationals' playoff success was not a factor here). I’m looking forward to that meal, probably in March, when I’ll be updating Moon Handbooks Patagonia there. If Todd’s not around at that time, though, it could happen in Valparaíso or nearby Viña.

"Chinitos" - in Baseball and Buenos Aires

Last week, I watched in disappointment as my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers lost the deciding seventh game of baseball's World Series to the Houston Astros. Except for Game Seven, it was an exciting Series between the sport's two best teams, and the 'Stros were deserving—but there was also one disheartening blot on their first championship in the franchise's 55-year history.

My Dodgers lost the Series last Wednesday, but memorabilia was still on sale at LAX Saturday night.

That was the fault of Houston first baseman Yuliesky Gurriel. Elated over hitting a Game Three home run off the Dodgers' Yu Darvish, the Cuban-born Gurriel bought into a racist stereotype by narrowing his eyelids, using his index fingers, toward the Japanese-born Darvish. He also, apparently, mouthed the Spanish insult chinito (Chinaman) at Darvish and later gave an unconvincing public apology even as baseball commissioner Rob Manfred considered suspending the Houston player.

The eventual suspension—five games at the beginning of the 2018 season rather than immediate suspension of at least one game—was equally unconvincing. This was part of the reason that Fern Shen, the Chinese-American author of a New York Times op-ed, stated that she became a Dodgers fan when, in Game Six, Los Angeles starting pitcher Rich Hill delayed pitching to Gurriel so that the Dodger Stadium crowd could boo him.

Many of former Argentine president Carlos Menem's opponents vilified him as a turco (Turk)

Here it bears mention that Cubans, and other Latin Americans, often apply the term chino indiscriminately for anybody of Asian ancestry, and there are other similar slurs. Argentines, for instance, may refer to anybody of Middle Eastern origins as as a turco (Turk).  Enemies of former president Carlos Menem—of Syrian descent—sometimes called him a turco de mierda ("shitty Turk").

A small supermercado chino in my Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo

Still, such terms are not always racist. Throughout the city of Buenos Aires, for instance, there are small Chinese-owned supermarkets—glorified convenience stores in many cases—that are known descriptively as supermercados chinos or, simply, chinos.

I was reminded of that when, on my Saturday night flight from Los Angeles to Lima, I watched the Argentine film Un Cuento Chino (loosely translated as "Chinese Takeaway," trailer above), starring Ricardo Darin as the irascible owner of a small hardware store who finds himself sheltering—ambivalently—Jun Quian, a young Chinese man (played by Ignacio Huang) who has arrived in the Argentine capital in search of a long-lost uncle.

Neither speaks a word of the other's language but, as it happens, both Darin's character and his Chinese guest have more in common than might be expected, but I'll plead spoiler alert on that. It does come back to the film's title—a cuento chino is a tall tale, though I don’t know the idiom’s exact etymology in Spanish.

For what it's worth, I'll close by noting that Darin's son, also an actor, goes by the nickname Chino. His female counterpart might be actress China Suarez, whose maternal grandmother’s parents were Japanese immigrants to Argentina.

Polynesias of the Americas, North and South

When I was a toddler, my traveling life began when my parents left Minnesota for the

Pacific Northwest, and my earliest memories include crossing the Rockies en route to a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. In later years I became a stamp collector, imagining remote destinations I might someday visit, and I listened to the radio—when, after dark, the signals from remote 50,000-watt stations would boom onto my tiny transistor radio, under the blankets.

In 1961, Hawai'i's Frankie Reveira was starting catcher for the Pacific Coast League champion Tacoma Giants.

Growing up on the West Coast, I heard major league baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, and the legendary Vin Scully helped make me a lifetime Dodgers fan. Locally, though, I was a fan of the Tacoma Giants (Pacific Coast League), and I would lie awake until the bars closed—even though I was nowhere near drinking age—to hear Don Hill’s re-creations when Tacoma played the Hawai’i Islanders in Honolulu (those games started at 11 p.m. Pacific Standard Time). In fact, the Tacoma Giants themselves employed a Hawaiian catcher by the name of Frankie Reveira (whom Hill, unfortunately, nicknamed “Johnny Pineapple”), and a number of Hawaiians now play in the majors.

Hanga Roa is the only town on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Oddly, despite its relative accessibility, Hawai’i was not the first Polynesian island I ever visited—that “honor” goes to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), which I’ve visited at least half a dozen times in the course of writing and updating guidebooks to southernmost South America (Rapa Nui, of course, is a Chilean possession, though it’s gained some autonomy is recent years).

Hawai'i, especially the Big Island, has dense forests and rivers that Rapa Nui lacks.

Hawai’i, of course, has a far greater land mass (10,931 square miles, about 28,300 sq km) than Rapa Nui (just 63 square miles or 164 sq km), with a much larger population (1.43 million v. 5,800 or so), but the two still have much in common. While Hawai’i is a literally tropical archipelago (Honolulu’s latitude is 21° N), Rapa Nui (27° S) is a bit farther from the Equator and, with the islets of Motu Iti and Motu Nui, it barely classifies as an archipelago.

Motu Iti and Motu Nui lie a short distance off the Rapa Nui shoreline.

Rapa Nui's Playa Ovahe is far less crowded than just about anywhere in Hawai'i.

Both areas are volcanic, though Rapa Nui has no active volcanism and its handful of beaches is far less crowded than Hawai’i’s. Both have lava tubes, however, that are open for short hikes. Hawai’i retains much of its native forest, while nearly barren Rapa Nui now has only non-native trees. There have been efforts, however, to re-introduce the native toromiro tree, which is extinct in the wild but present at botanical gardens at Kew and Gothenburg.

Hiking through the Thurston Lava Tube, Volcanoes National Park, Big Island of Hawai'i

Rapa Nui's Ana Te Pahu is far smaller than the Thurston Lava Tube.

There are also some links between the Polynesian peoples of the two archipelagos. Educated in the United States, former Rapa Nui governor Sergio Rapu earned an M.A. in Pacific culture and archaeology from the University of Hawai’i, and has helped supervise the restoration of megalithic monuments such as those at Ahu Tongariki and other sites (the term ahu, denoting a memorial altar or shrine, is also common in Hawai’i and other parts of Polynesia). What Rapa Nui really lacks, though, may be its own Frankie Reveira—soccer, sadly, is the prime participant sport here.

Former governor Sergio Rapu, who has studied and lived in Hawai'i, helped restore Rapa Nui's Ahu Tongariki.