QUEENS -- Citi Field has seen a lot of bad baseball recently, but worse, it's seen boring baseball. There's something uniquely sad about boring baseball, littered with pop ups that should have been caught and double plays that should have been turned. Errors happen, monster would-be home runs land just shy of the warning track. But boring baseball is not about what could have been; it's about what never was at all.
LIDOM -- the Dominican Republic's annual winter baseball league -- is not boring. LIDOM came to the United States for the first time ever this weekend. The first stateside matchup between the Tigres del Licey and the Águilas Cibaeñas on Saturday was not particularly great baseball, despite a never-ending stream of pitchers that combined to no-hit Licey through eight innings before a trapped non-catch call was upheld to ruin history with one out in the ninth (to everyone not wearing an umpire's uniform, it looked like a clean catch). There were walks and an unnerving number of passed balls and an opener in front of sometimes major-league reliever Nabil Crismatt, who is far more popular in certain circles of the internet than he deserves to be.
Better baseball, certainly, has been played. But not in November at the home of the Mets in front of 33,000 people, evenly split between the royal blue and white of Licey and the black and yellow of Águilas with rosters sprinkled with former major leaguers like Miguel Andújar and Jorge Bonifacio.
Saturday's game, the second of the three-game Titans of the Caribbean exhibition series, started an hour late for no apparent reason other than nobody seemed to be in any particular hurry. Nelson Cruz, just days after announcing his retirement, caught the ceremonial first pitch from New York congressman Adriano Espaillat, who presented him with an award to celebrate his 19-year career. The smaller scoreboard in right field, not the monstrosity in center that new Mets owner Steve Cohen had installed before the 2023 season, never once properly identified Andújar; a typo registered him as "Licey" the entire game. The outfield was graffitied with nine chalk rings, left over from the golf course they built last weekend. Starlin Castro paired his Águilas jersey with Cubs pants, a relic from a former life.
Ambientazo en el @CitiField 🤩🇩🇴
— LIDOM (@LIDOMRD) November 11, 2023
¡Nadie goza tanto como el DOMINICANO! 😎✌🏻#LIDOM #TitanesDelCaribe pic.twitter.com/qocvyvQMw9
Citi Field hasn't shaken like it did for Daniel Palka scoring on a wild pitch since David Wright homered in Game 3 of the 2015 World Series. From my seat high above home plate, three rows from falling out of the stadium, it felt bigger than the World Series. Louder, happier, more important than anything that has ever happened at Citi Field and will ever happen there. The DJ on the Shea Bridge, who spent five hours pumping Spanish-language music at ear-splitting levels, cranked up his speakers even higher. Couples danced the merengue on the stairs. Kids too young to remember Juan Lagares, who hurt his leg in Friday's game and sat out Saturday, cheered like Palka had just hit a walk-off grand slam.
That energy never let up. Not when the game slowed to a crawl thanks to mid-inning pitching changes and batters who stepped out of the box after every pitch. Not when the wind picked up and the temperatures dropped into the low 50s. Not when the college football games started on bar TVs a few 7 line stops away. No one cared that this was an exhibition game. They bought hats and sweatshirts in the team stores and bracelets (not quite the Taylor Swift ones, but close) from the guy prowling the stands with his homemade wares. They cheered for Mel Rojas' son and César Valdez, for men whose names they will never see again and for men like Christopher Morel, who will be making his way to Cubs spring training in just a few months. They danced and sang and celebrated meaningless baseball that meant more than anything.
For a weekend, baseball was just a game. We didn't have to talk about thieving owners stealing their team away or the luxury-tax implications of signing a mediocre reliever or the ugly side of this sport we all love so much. Águilas won, two outs from a no-hitter, but it didn't matter. The Titans of the Caribbean series wasn't about the score. It was about joy.
