Sister Lenore Gibb -- Baseball, Poverty, and Grace
By Colman McCarthy
San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic—If you have a yen for insider baseball talk and are in the hemisphere’s most rabid baseball nation, the aficionada to spend time with is Sister Lenore Gibb. As a member of the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, one of Catholicism's most progressive orders with 158 women who have been teaching, nursing, rescuing and agitating in three countries since 1926, Sister Lenore’s canny knowledge of the game is traced to her enduring ties to Dominican beísbol players.
Since coming to Consuelo, a town of approximately 40,000 people, in the province of San Pedro de Macorís in 1959 as a 23-year-old nun in the first fervor of missionary life, she has taught future stars in the classrooms of Divine Providence public elementary school. As a friend, she encouraged them to be as gracious off the field as they are competitive on. As a mentor, she reminded them never to forget the poverty from which they rose. In whatever role, she is in a league of her own. If baseball statisticians had a place in the books for the school which has the most major and minor league ballplayers—peloteros--as children in the classroom, Divina Providencia would be the undisputed record holder.
Among the name players who first romped gloveless and often shoeless on the hardpan fields of Consuelo are Sammy Sosa, Jesús (Pepe) Frias, Julio César Franco, Rico Carty, Alfredo Griffin, Juan Samuel, Nelson Norman, Alberto Lois, Rafael (el Gallo) Batista, Víctor Davis, Héctor Eduardo, Jaime Davis, Manny Acta and Clemente Hart. Sosa, born into the destitution that marks Consuelo as one of the most impoverished towns in Latin America’s second poorest country, had to leave school at age 8 to grub pesos as a shoeshine boy. Griffin was a 17-year-old 6th grader when he signed his first pro contract. When a biography of Rico Carty was published last year, the outfielder who hit .299 in 15 seasons in the majors, sent Sister Lenore a copy with this inscription: “To Sister Lenore—Be good to yourself. Thank you for your efforts for and teaching our children. Thank you, thank you.”
According to Alfredo Medina, the author of two books on Dominican baseball and the only professional writer in Consuelo, Ozzie Virgil of the San Francisco Giants was the first to make it to the majors in 1956. Some 320 would follow, with more than 70 on big league rosters now, and several hundred in the minors. Medina believes that per capita no other nation has produced more major and minor leaguers, and no other area more than San Pedro de Macorís.
Sister Lenore joined the Grey Sisters in 1953 after hitting and throwing right as a schoolgirl softball player in Windsor, Canada. In a few weeks she will celebrate her 50th anniversary of joining her religious order. At 67, she is slender, long-striding and tall—the build of the left-fielder she once was. If needed, she was a catcher. On a recent afternoon in the common room of the Divine Providence Convent that is on the quad of the school and around the corner from Consuelo’s largest ball field, the nun recalled the September day in 1959 when she and two other Grey Sisters arrived in the community at the request of the parish priest of St Ann’s Church who saw the great need of education for the good of the community. “It was difficult. The local people didn’t understand what we were here for. We were white, we were women, we were foreigners. We wore long religious habits. But
the children were athletic, and so was I. It was almost natural that we started playing baseball together, volleyball and basketball, too. Another sister was musical. That was her way of connecting.”
Consuelo translates to “consolation” in English—is 50 miles east of Santo Domingo. A smoke-belching sugar mill, once owned by a U.S. company, now privately run by Dominican business men, dominates the town where unemployment is over 90 percent. Like a daily Vesuvian eruption, the mill’s chimney spews ashes that darken the sky and float to the earth in a free-fall of flaked pollution. Narrow unpaved lanes, shared by unhelmeted scooterists (the local taxi service), donkey-pulled carts, Nubian goats, listless chickens and mongrels, wind through neighborhoods cramped with dwellings only a slim cut above huts. Like an orchid among weeds, a gaily painted, spacious and well-windowed home occasionally breaks the pattern. It’s a house built by a multi-millionaire big-leaguer for his parents or relatives. Surrounding Consuelo are thousands of acres of cane fields, worked seasonally by low-paid and injury-plagued cutters. One of the busiest local shops is Western Union, into whose office survival money pours in from New York and elsewhere to the families back home. A few miles east of Consuelo is Casa de Campo, a resort for wealthy North Americans and Europeans, where room rates of $280, and $180 greens fees at the Teeth of the Dog Oceanside links, are higher than the yearly incomes of many Consuelenses.
What began in 1959 with one woman’s use of baseball to lower barriers has become another story altogether, one that has as much to do with service, spirituality and scrappiness as with a game. That year, 30 unruly students and two teachers were in the elementary school. Space was shared with a barbershop. During this school year, 2002-2003, there are over 10,000 students receiving quality education and Christian formation in four large schools in town and thirteen smaller schools spread throughout the sugarcane fields in small communities called “bateyes”. The numbers are so large that children are spliced into shifts: 8:00 a.m. to 12 noon, 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Most teachers teach two shifts and are paid the equivalent of $100 US a month for each. The wage comes to about $1.10 an hour. The schools are Government owned Public institutions, opened to all without distinction of race, gender, creed or age.
The increase in student population is the result of Sisters going into Consuelo’s neighborhoods to preach the gospel of education, and then backing up the talk by blistering their hands from shaking assorted money trees: the Dominican government, , the Grey Sisters, family and friends. Sister Lenore began as a first grade teacher and taught in all the grades before becoming principal of Divina Providencia School in 1987. In 1997, she accepted the government’s invitation to be the school district supervisor, with all the responsibility this entails. It means less time with children, but, an administrative chance to bring first-rate education to a remote part of the world where much else in the lives of the dispossessed families is third or fourth rate.
After years of teaching, Sister Lenore realized that more was needed than quality schools. Thirty five per cent of Consuelo’s high school graduates enter university or college, mostly
in Santo Domingo, but only a few have the money to finish and get a degree. What happens then? Sister has a scholarship program to help those who cannot make it on their own. In 1997, a job training program was started in an old school building where skills in baking, sewing, plumbing, electricity, hairdressing, tourism and hotel work are taught. There is a health center, and near it a home for the elderly. Sister also spearheads the Committee of Hope, founded in order to answer the cries of the needy. The Committee builds houses, supplies food and clothing for those who are trying to eke out a living. A large structure is a half-finished cultural center that will be, when $240,000 is raised, a site for the performing arts. Sister is in tune with the hunger of the spirit and the need to develop and express God given talent in music and the arts. In one of the center’s classrooms the other afternoon, two Japanese musicians—volunteers in a Peace Corps type of program—led eight Consuelo children in an impromptu violin concert for some guests. The recently founded orchestra has been invited to give concerts in many parts of the country. Everyone carries the hope that one day soon, they will be able to perform on the stage of their own community cultural center.
For Sister Lenore, and the two other Grey Sisters who serve here, the buildings and the programs are small signs that economic development is possible, no matter how crushing the poverty. Salaries are paid to the Consuelenses who staff the programs. “People here want to work,” Sister Lenore argues. “If First World countries could help developing countries create jobs, whether in industry or service work, and not just give or lend money, it would help stabilize the economy. Foreign investment with the focus on helping a developing country and at the same time respecting its sovereignty and the human dignity of the person could give sources of employment and thus combat poverty and misery. What’s needed is to allow the workers to become part-owners, so then they have a stake in running a successful company. Everyone involved will be interested because they will personally benefit from that interest and dedication. The work will supply meaning, not only a salary.”
As easily, and as proudly, as Sister Lenore mentions the famous baseball players who came through the classrooms, she speaks also about the other big leaguers she and the Grey Sisters have taught: the teachers, doctors and health care workers, lawyers, politicians and other professionals. Many of these professionals have stayed to serve the people in their own home town. Ninety five percent of the teachers in Consuelo’s 19 schools are former students.
“If we produce another Sammy Sosa,” she says, “sure, we’d be happy. But I believe what’s more important is the person who is well-balanced in all aspects of life. I am happy for someone who has talent to play baseball and to make a living at it. However, I believe the wealth of a community is truly found in the good mothers and fathers who treat seriously the responsibility of a family, who reverence and respect life, and who are committed to helping those in need by working to reform the system that keeps the poor, poor.”
One Consuelese who fulfills that hope is Pepe Frias, a longstanding ally of Sister Lenore and who played nine years in the major leagues. An infielder from 1973 to 1981 for the
Montreal Expos, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers and Texas Rangers, he is one of the few players who returned home to San Pedro de Macorís and Consuelo. Local politicians showed their gratitude by naming the street where he lives with his wife and two children “Pepe Frias Boulevard.” The youngest of 15 children, whose father earned $1.50 pesos a day cutting cane, Frias left school in the third grade to work in the sugar mill. For recreation, he played baseball. Gloves were made of scraps of canvas or cardboard. Frias didn’t own a real glove until age 19. That was 1967 when a San Francisco Giant scout spotted a skinny kid who had quick hands, fast feet and deep reserves of desire. He was signed for $500, money his family would live off for two years. In 1970, after being released from three minor league teams, but refusing to give up because “I was the only hope for my family,” Frías gambled on playing for a semi-pro team in Canada. A Montreal Expo scout saw him and offered a contract but no money. In 1973, after three years in the bushes, the Expos brought him up.
As much as Frías benefited from baseball, he knows, as does Sister Lenore, that only a few Dominicans make it to a big league roster. Too often, they are seen by scouts and agents as commodities in the billion-dollar baseball industry. Whether they can read and write means little to the signing agent who will be enriched if the kid becomes the next Sammy.
The other afternoon, Frías went with Sister Lenore to one of the Elementary Schools a mile outside of town. A well-tended baseball field is there, overseen by Frías and a former Peace Corps volunteer. While Frías went to the field, where the six and seven-year-olds swarmed around him as if a demigod was among them, Sister Lenore went inside the school to visit the teachers and school children. Future big-leaguers were there, too.
There is a mural on one of the outside walls of Divina Providencia School which depicts the life of St. Marguerite D’Youville, founder of the Grey Sisters and the early beginnings in Canada. The inscription reads “A past to celebrate. A future to reveal”. Sister has invited the same muralist to do another mural on the opposite wall, which will tell the Consuelo story. The inscription chosen for this second mural will read “The whole world is filled with God’s love. All are called to reveal His love, here and now.” Sister claims the message to be, that in spite of the evil in our world, God’s love abounds even more. Each one is responsible for making that love known in any way he/she can, even through baseball.