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While most of their teammates were going back to school, getting back to their offseason jobs, or simply returning home, Jamie Davis was cooped up in an apartment complex in fear of his life and teammate Andy High was having the time of his life…
In Colombia.
Not the District of, the university in New York City, or the minor league baseball team in South Carolina. That’s Colombia, where throngs of natives followed them everywhere, but not because they were ballplayers. They did it because they were Americans.
“They were always offering to trade you stuff for your T-shirt, your hat, or your sneakers,” said Davis. “Or they wanted you to teach them to swear in English.”
Davis and High would learn why after they played their first away games.
The Blue Ox duo got the idea to play ball in South America after talking with former pitching coach Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd” last summer about playing winter ball. The Bangor Blue Ox pitchers decided to try and hook up with a team in the Colombian League.
“Oil Can told us about it. We figured we could use the extra work and it was a chance to play winter ball so we checked into it through him and his agent,” said High.
Boyd’s agent arranged for the pair to play for the same team in Sincelejo. But almost two months later, a snag developed in their plans. The league representative who arranged to have High and Davis play for Sincelejo called less than a week before their departure date to tell them they wouldn’t be on the same team.
“We couldn’t play together because Sincelejo wanted lefties only,” said Davis.
So the pair, who had been on the same baseball team for five years, were split up. High went to Sincelejo and Davis eventually hooked up with a team in Monterrey.
“We scrimmaged against each other in college, but it was kind of strange to be on different teams,” said High.
A tale of two pitchers
Both Davis and High left Maine on flights to Miami the first week of November. From then on, their experiences couldn’t have been more different.
While the Sincelejo team was setting High up in an apartment, Davis was cooling his heels in a Miami hotel, waiting for instructions and a plane ticket from the people in Monterrey.
“I didn’t know how long I’d be there and I had to be ready to leave, so I couldn’t go anywhere,” said Davis. “I just sat in the hotel and watched TV for a week.”
If he had known then what he knows now, Davis would have gone back home to Vermont and never taken the Nov. 1st flight to Cartagena. Instead, he took a bus to Monterrey – 200 miles north of Medellin… Yes, that Medellin – and checked into the team’s apartment complex.
“I just stayed in my room,” he said. “They told us not to leave our rooms at night. Clubs were off-limits!”
So Davis and his teammates – the league allowed a maximum of six Americans per team – would eat at the ballpark or the complex, which didn’t have hot water but did have cable TV.
Only three network channels came in clearly: ESPN, HBO, and Playboy.
“But they were all in English,” said Davis, smiling broadly.
Meanwhile, High was having a great time some 350 miles to the northwest.
“It went a lot better than I expected. You don’t know the people and you hear about the drugs… I was scared to death,” said High. “We didn’t realize it would be such a culture shock.”
A couple of the guys in High’s group knew Spanish and that helped them conquer the language barrier and find their way around.
“It was a really fun place to be, even when we weren’t playing ball,” said High, who was paid meal money in addition to his bi-weekly salary and provided with a place to stay by the team.
“There were no expenses to pay and you could eat for two bucks or so. We ate a lot of steak and chinese food,” he added.
They also attended various night spots and cultural attractions.
“I went to one bullfight. That was pretty neat. I saw some guy get gored. It wasn’t your typical bullfight. They had about 100 to 200 people in a pen or whatever, probably about a third the size of [the UMaine field house]. Then they bring a bull out and he runs around,” High explained.
While High was attending bullfights and admiring the “the best-looking women in the world,” his Blue Ox teammate was growing more and more disenchanted.
“There were only a couple guys on my team who spoke English,” said Davis. “Our manager could too, but he didn’t arrive until the second day of practice.”
Not exactly a promising start. A few days later, the players went to pick up their first paychecks, but the team didn’t have them ready.
Davis said he did enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere that pervaded the games and the stands.
“The fans really get into it. They’re dancing around and they have these big marching bands in the stands,” Davis explained.
“It’s like a big party,” added High.
The festive fans were about the only things Davis remembers fondly.
Military police with machine guns would be stationed in each team’s dugout and field conditions were less than ideal.
“The fields were pretty rocky and bumpy and the lighting wasn’t great,” he said. “It wasn’t unusual for [the lights] to go out once or twice a game.”
The final straw came a couple weeks later, when Davis was hanging out in his apartment one night around 11:30 p.m.
“A guy came in and said `Hey man, what’s up?,” Davis said. “He acted kind of weird and kept telling me he lived here, but the complex was all just players only.”
The man made Davis nervous. So he got a couple of teammates to come over in case the man came back. Good thing he did, because the man did come back – with a couple of friends carrying bags.
The men grew increasingly agitated and began shouting.
“One of our pitchers pushed the guy and his buddies pulled guns out of their bags,” said Davis.
The players managed to push the men out of the aparment, slam the door shut, and lock it before any shots were fired.
“They didn’t shoot or take anything, but they were pounding on our doors saying they were going to kill us,” Davis said.
A couple players went to the window ledge and shouted for help. Twenty minutes later, the police arrived, but the men were gone.
That was enough for Davis. He decided to leave as soon as possible, but that didn’t come easy either.
“They wouldn’t give me my plane ticket unless I paid them $500 for it,” he said. “I checked at the airport and it was $300, so I bought it there and came back December 2nd.”
Despite his harrowing experiences, Davis said he would go back and play again – if he could play for High’s team.
A Blue Ox abroad
High’s winter in Colombia went much better. He arrived the first week of November and didn’t leave until Feb. 5.
The southpaw from Fayetteville, N.C., not only gained valuable experience in the offseason, he was paid well, and helped his team win the league championship.
High, who said his team paid “a little more” than the Blue Ox, went 7-4 with a 3.50 ERA, but finished the season in the bullpen after Sincelejo got a big lefthander from the Dominican Republic. High agreed with Davis’ assessment of the playing fields.
“The defense in that league was a lot better, but the fields were crappy compared to these up here. Now I can understand how their shortstops come up here and dominate!” said High.
High, whose team routinely drew 10,000-12,000 people, received a lot of instruction and useful criticism from manager and former major leaguer Jose Tartabull, who played with the Boston Red Sox.
“I pretty much learned how to throw a fastball because down there, they all can hit the junk,” explained High, whose best pitch was his curve last year in the Northeast League.
High said players in the league would do anything to get an edge.
“A lot of them were peeking in to see what the signs were,” he said. “I had a couple of home runs hit off me because they were peeking.”
The 65-game schedule didn’t bother High much. He went down to play ball and did just that almost every day. The main problem he had was fighting off bouts of homesickness.
“It was tough missing Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. It was weird, too, because Christmas is like New Year’s Day down there and New Year’s is like a family day,” he explained.
Things got so bad, High’s dad had to tell him to stop calling home so much with his phone card after he got a $900 phone bill.
“Yeah, but it all worked out pretty good,” he said. “I learned a lot and I could have done a lot worse.”
Just ask Jamie Davis.
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