Part IV in the five-part series on Kevin Tolar’s 19-year odyssey as a professional baseball player.
It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to develop preconceived notions of what it must be like for Americans playing Winter Ball during the offseason.
Squalid living conditions. Food that challenges even the sturdiest constitution. Unruly fans. Military men standing watch at the edges of the field holding automatic weapons.
Language barriers. Cultural barriers.
Kevin Tolar spent six seasons traveling to faraway places such as Taiwan and Venezuela trying to further his 19-year professional baseball career as a relief pitcher.
Not only did he come away relatively unscathed by the experience, he didn’t encounter the seamier stereotypes and he rather enjoyed it all.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect to fathom is how following the strain and tedium of a long summer of baseball he recharged mentally and physically to get back on the mound.
Tolar said he had two weeks off following the end of his regular season before departing for Winter Ball. Once he had completed his second season, whether it be in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela or Taiwan, he customarily then had three weeks to himself before the start of spring training with a major league ballclub, which became a regular part of his routine the last decade of his career.
“Except that every year in Winter Ball we made the playoffs, and one year we were in the Caribbean World Series and I only had one week,” Tolar said.
“Once you get as developed as you’re going to get it’s your job. I might go to the manager and say I’m available, but if you can get me a couple of days off it would be appreciated. You’ve got to know the difference between hurt and hurting (with your arm). It goes from stiffness to slightly beyond sore.”
Tolar said American players on opposing teams often would take care of each other.
“Kind of like in the military when they say they’ve spilled blood in the same mud,” he said. “We’d try and beat each other’s brains out on the field, but once it was over you might ask them out to have a beer, and when (you played in their ballpark) they’d do the same for you.”
Not every Winter Ball experience was equal, so they will be detailed separately below. But when recalling the experience Tolar seemed to enter a comfort zone that always wasn’t apparent in his depictions of spring training, and when competing in the minor leagues and his brief stints in the majors.
Taiwan
“It was a huge culture difference. Nobody locks their doors. It’s an incredibly polite society,” Tolar said.
The preparation in pregame conditioning and code of conduct during the game was very much like in Japan, where certain authority, whether it is a manager or an umpire is not questioned.
“Very similar. One thing kind of strange was that after seven innings they don’t take a stretch, they take a break in the game for about 15 minutes. There’s no arguing, period. With anybody. Almost zero emotion in the game. I learned fast how they expect things to be.
“Conditioning for pitchers is totally different. You stretch for 45 minutes, do form running for 30 minutes, so for an hour and 15 minutes before a game you do nothing but conditioning — you haven’t even touched a ball yet. It’s pretty much the same in Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
“They don’t believe in pitch counts. You could throw 200 pitches and the next day they’re out throwing from the mound. The foreign players (pitchers), you did your own schedule. They figured that Americans were seasoned enough to know how to prepare.”
Dominican Republic
“The most difficult (of his Winter Ball locations) was the Dominican because of the third world element. You’d fly in and look down and see all these sheds, what looked like something in your backyard, except they were the houses. I was told that something like 75 to 80 percent of the people had dirt floors and no plumbing.
“It almost seems like the poorer the country the happier the people were. It had some bad elements, but you were told up front about certain places not to go. The people there, though. They always seemed to find the silver lining in everything.
“The Dominican Republic was a cool place for baseball. Those who were lucky enough to have a car might unhook their battery and car horn and bring it into the stadium” too make noise at certain junctures of the game.
“The country goes crazy over baseball. I was treated very nice there.”
Venezuela
“Probably the most fun I had playing. Here (fans) they’re silent a lot. In the Dominican they were loud. In Venezuela they would groan on every ball and cheer on every single strike. They loved each individual battle that happens during the game. The only thing I saw that compared was in Anaheim with the eighth-inning Rally Monkey on the big screen.
In Venezuela “You might have 18 to 20,000 people there and the noise level was unbelievable. Sometimes when they disagreed with something they might throw beer cups or food on the field and you’d have to stop the game while it was all cleaned up. It added to the intensity. It made it more exciting.”
Tolar said that often in Winter Ball there would be at least one American on every umpiring crew, and sometimes two. Native umpires sometimes treated American players differently.
“As a new guy coming in (Venezuela) they would test you wanting to see if you were going to show them up. They might expand the strike zone with an American hitting. Then there was a transformation, or when you might become more popular from success they would accept you.
“I played there five times and when the umpires got to know you they would communicate with you. They might come up and shake your hand before a game.”
The situation as far as food differed with each country. Tolar said that it wasn’t a problem for him in Mexico, where he also played for two Triple-A teams late in his career, because he loves Mexican food.
“In the Dominican Republic it was beans and rice. You go to certain places and you didn’t eat a lot of native food. Like no raw vegetables or fruit.”
Why?
“Montezuma’s Revenge. You drank only bottled water. If you brushed your teeth you didn’t swallow the water or you used bottled water.”
Tolar said that Taiwan was completely Americanized “except for about a gazillion mopeds.” The tradition of eating out in restaurants was a culture shock, however.
“If you went to a restaurant one thing that was cool was they brought the utensils and food to your table and you cooked it yourself,” Tolar said. That meant adding whatever spices you preferred, and preparing the meal to desired specifications.
“And they had night markets in the alleys that actually were some of the cleanest places. You’d walk through the alley and there would be kiosk after kiosk where they would sell everything imaginable. I think I spent more money in those back alleys than anywhere else. They had everything. Anything from designer purses to underwear, jewelry … It was kind of like a flea market on steroids. Some of them would go on for miles.”
Tolar didn’t play Winter Ball during the 1990s as he had married his first wife and moved to Sarasota. That’s where he stayed in the offseason.
He has a daughter who is a sophomore in college and a son about to enter high school who still reside their with their mother.
Tolar said that baseball might have cost him a marriage, but that it also brought him his soul mate, Sofia, who he met while playing Winter Ball in Venezuela.
They have a 2-year-old son, Jacob.
Next: The series concludes with retirement and reflections on a career in baseball