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By Scott Mammoser
Walking through the streets of Cien Fuegos, the barrio of Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, everyone knows Santiago Esquea as “Chago.”
He arrives at the ballpark where roughly 350 players dream of making the Big Leagues one day. There are four categories of teams in the Liga Portiva, ages 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, and 15-16, all eager to learn from the man who has decades of experience.
“I enjoy it because it is an eternal tradition passed down from my father,” Esquea said. “Here, there is no one who does not play. They do not separate from one another, and they listen to each other.”
One of the players who Esquea instructed is pitcher Williams Jerez, who is about to begin his second season for the Sacramento River Cats of the Pacific Coast League, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.
“Every kid in the Dominican Republic, we like to play baseball,” Jerez said.
When Jerez was six years old, he told his father he wanted to join the baseball league, and his father brought him to meet Chago.
“I met him there and started training with him, learning a lot of things,” Jerez said. “Chago was one of the guys who used to have a big group of little kids. I was one of them, he always worked to help because I didn’t know that much. I was growing fast. When the time came to move forward, it was hard because I was with him for many years. It was a great experience to be a part of his organization.”
Jerez said he was with Chago for eight years, from ages 7 through 15, before leaving for Santo Domingo for one year. The capital city is usually the springboard where Dominican players get noticed. His father then moved the family to Brooklyn, but it was a difficult transition for Jerez because he was unfamiliar with the area. When he told his father that he wanted to return to the Dominican Republic, his father’s response was to wait a little while longer.
“I met a guy on one of the baseball fields in Brooklyn, and he told me they had a baseball team in high school,” Jerez added. “I studied in school and played baseball at the same time. My English was zero, but I had a lot of friends, and I could learn. On the part of the baseball side, it was a lot of hard work. In the winter, we had a trainer who was helping us.”
The hard work was fulfilling. In 2011, the Boston Red Sox drafted the 19-year-old Jerez in the second round. Seven years later, after several minor league stops, he was traded to the Angels, where he made his Major League debut last August.
“I used to be a pitcher with Chago, and then a position player,” Jerez said. “I decided to change to pitcher, but then I got hurt, so I decided to be an outfielder. Once I was signed, I went back to pitching. Chago, he’s a guy who likes to put the guys in the right position. He doesn’t like to see guys doing bad things, and he wants them to be humble and good people. He was tough for us, but as a kid, we don’t think too much.”
Jerez said that many of Chago’s players who get signed think they have everything, but Chago tells his that he is an exception.
“I always come and talk to the little guys,” Jerez said. “I tell them to keep playing and working hard, don’t do bad things, and wait for the time because the time is going to come. For me, it was a lot of years to get signed. If they trust themselves, they can get something good.”
