I arrived at the spring-training complex of the Tampa Bay Rays in Port Charlotte, Florida, around ten A.M. It would be a typical mid-nineties March day under a relentless sun. I was looking for Charlie Montoyo, the forty-six-year-old manager of the Rays\u2019 top minor-league affiliate, the AAA Durham Bulls.<\/p>\n
Outfielder Jeff Salazar pointed me toward the \u201chalf-field,\u201d a regulation infield with no outfield on the outskirts of the sprawling complex. A chain-link fence separated the infield dirt from a swamp. There, I found Jamie Nelson, catching coordinator for the Rays organization, tossing pitches to Venezuelan catcher Jos\u00e9 Lobat\u00f3n, who was crouched in full gear. He caught the balls, exploded out of his position behind home plate\u2014helmet and face mask falling off each time\u2014and threw darts to second base, where Montoyo straddled the bag and gloved the throws, then tossed the balls underhand into a rolling cart.<\/p>\n
The three men executed this drill for fifteen minutes, saying nothing. I considered returning to the car for more sunscreen. Then I thought about \u201cdeep languor,\u201d a term Richard Ford once used to describe the pleasant monotony of baseball and its routines. He borrowed the term, almost certainly, from a speech by Shakespeare\u2019s Titus Andronicus, who used those two words in regard to the tears, shed from his heart and soul, that mark the dusty street. Languor<\/em>\u2019s Latin origins imply a dreaminess or relief through weariness or muted suffering. It\u2019s a word that fits the origins of Southern blues or Appalachian string music, and it fits baseball, too, a sport of failure. Championship teams still lose 40 percent of their games. Hitters that succeed only 30 percent of the time make the Hall of Fame. It\u2019s a sport in which the most successful players wear looks of rote boredom. They exercise a loose, clear-headed ambivalence necessary to perform their reactive, elegant split-second craft at the highest levels.<\/p>\n In Little League in his native Puerto Rico in the seventies, Jose Carlos \u201cCharlie\u201d Montoyo wasn\u2019t allowed to pitch because he threw too hard. As an infielder, he made his way through the ranks of American professional baseball and played six years in AAA ball, the highest level under the major leagues. In September 1993 he spent twenty-seven days in the majors, on the roster of the Montreal Expos. In only five at-bats, he had two hits and three runs batted in, but he never got another chance, due to changes in the Expos front office before the following spring; Montoyo got lost in the uncertain shuffle that defines AAA baseball, a level of sport more enigmatic than any other in America, with young strivers coming up from AA and disgruntled veterans coming down from the big leagues, mixing on a 25-man team where winning is less important than individual training. At the end of the 1996 season, Montoyo retired from the minor leagues and the next year, at age thirty-one, took a job managing the Single A Princeton (W.V.) Rays. He\u2019s been managing ever since, working his way up through the Rays\u2019 organization.<\/p>\n \u201cPsychologically, baseball at the AAA level can kill you,\u201d Montoyo told me in July in Durham. \u201cWhen they say making it to the big leagues is about right place right time, it\u2019s so true it\u2019s not even funny. Just when you think you\u2019re out, you\u2019re in\u2014you get traded, a random guy gets hurt in the big leagues, and suddenly you\u2019re called up, after waiting for two years behind somebody on your former team. Then, just when you think you\u2019re in, you\u2019re out\u2014somebody else gets called up and you are sent down. You get mad, you start wondering, Why me? You start following other players in the box scores, and you focus on things that you should forget about, things you can\u2019t control, and your performance bottoms out. I\u2019ve seen it a thousand times. When you get to a certain level of talent, the difference is not talent but whether you focus things you can control. My job is to keep players focused on today\u2019s preparation and today\u2019s routine, not what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n In five years in Durham, Montoyo has won five consecutive division titles, plus the AAA National Championship. A year before he joined the Bulls he won another title managing the Rays\u2019 AA team, the Montgomery Biscuits. He maintains a near legend in Durham for not following statistics or standings, in part because he has little choice: his roster is determined by the parent organization and winning at the minor league level is not their priority. By necessity, Montoyo\u2019s style bears no resemblance to Moneyball<\/em>, in which personnel decisions are made through innovative analysis of statistics. <\/em>Montoyo manages human beings, not numbers, and evidence indicates he\u2019s a master of it.<\/p>\n In 2010 and 2011 the Durham Bulls were led by two players, Dan Johnson and Russ Canzler, who enjoyed career years and were selected MVPs of the International League. Neither player has a natural position in the field, better-than-average speed or throwing arms. But they excelled in the team environment created by Montoyo, who promises that no position player will ever go more than two games without starting. \u201cHe\u2019s by far the best manager I\u2019ve ever played for,\u201d said Canzler at the end of the 2011 season. \u201cHe knows how tough it is at this level.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe does an outstanding job keeping guys fresh,\u201d said Johnson, \u201cespecially during the heat of the summer. Minor league players get worn out all the time by overbearing managers. Charlie doesn\u2019t do that. But at the same time he sets a great example of working hard and wanting to succeed. Guys see him out here running, lifting weights, throwing batting practice every day.\u201d<\/p>\n During one batting practice session in Durham in July, in ninety-eight-degree heat, I counted 178 pitches thrown by Montoyo in a routine daily session.\u00a0(For those at home, try throwing a shoe across the room at half your capacity 178 times in fifteen minutes and see how you feel the next day.) When I told him his pitch count, he chuckled and said, \u201cMaybe I should ice my arm.\u201d<\/p>\n For six weeks in Port Charlotte, Montoyo awoke each morning at five o\u2019clock, ran five miles and lifted weights before the players arrived. In Durham he is known for long runs on the American Tobacco Trail, a converted railroad corridor. On his iPod he cranks Puerto Rican salsa, classic groups such as Hector Lavoe, El Gran Combo, La Fania All-Stars, and La Sonora Poncena. Salsa is often characterized as \u201cspicy\u201d or \u201chot,\u201d with brash trumpet and brass sections, but its rhythmic bed is syncopated and hypnotic, sometimes hallucinogenic, indicating its roots in ritual music.<\/p>\n Montoyo keeps a large collection of congas, bongos, and various other salsa percussion instruments in the home he shares with his wife, Samantha, and their two young sons, Tyson and Alex. He listens to the music in his earphones while playing the instruments in the garage. Without hearing the full ensemble \u2013 the brass and vocals on the front line, says Samantha, the neighbors can\u2019t comprehend the rhythms coming from Charlie\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n On April 4 there was a season-opening luncheon gala in the upscale American Tobacco complex across the street from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Seventy-five years ago, Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis, Peg Leg Sam, and other Piedmont blues musicians would have been playing for tips during shift changes outside of this football field\u2013size brick warehouse. On this day there were suited executives from across the burgeoning Raleigh-Durham\u2013Chapel Hill \u201cTriangle\u201d region celebrating the opening of a new season inside the plush restored warehouse.<\/p>\n The Bulls won five of seven at home to start the season.\u00a0They seemed headed for another winning season, if not a sixth straight title. The next day, though, the team left for what veteran major and minor league infielder Will Rhymes later called \u201cthe worst road trip in my career as a professional baseball player.\u201d The Bulls played fourteen games in fourteen days in Gwinnett, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; and Norfolk, Virginia. They went 1-13. Back in Durham they lost three straight, 1-16 after the 5-2 start. The Bulls were 6-18 overall and in a deep hole. They\u2019ve battled back to a near .500 record (59-67 as of August 16), but they are ten games behind in the division and eight games behind in the wild-card race. Montoyo\u2019s string of titles and playoff appearances is over.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the toughest season I\u2019ve experienced at this level, but I feel good knowing that I can endure it,\u201d says Montoyo. \u201cI\u2019ve known nothing but success. I\u2019d never experienced anything like this on the field, so I didn\u2019t know for sure if I could handle it. Now I know I can. The statistics will tell you that we are last in the league in pitching and we have trouble scoring runs. In baseball, success and failure is contagious. If you put yourself in a hole, individually or as a team, it\u2019s difficult to battle out of it. If you are hitting .200 in July, you can get hot for two weeks and you are still hitting only .225. It feels impossible. Then you go 0 for 4 and you are right back in your slump. But the players here are playing hard and that\u2019s all I ask. If they work hard, prepare everyday, and stay positive, that\u2019s all you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sam Stephenson is Lehman-Brady Joint Visiting Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He is currently at work on a biography of W. Eugene Smith for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I arrived at the spring-training complex of the Tampa Bay Rays in Port Charlotte, Florida, around ten A.M. It would be a typical mid-nineties March day under a relentless sun. I was looking for Charlie Montoyo, the forty-six-year-old manager of the Rays\u2019 top minor-league affiliate, the AAA Durham Bulls. Outfielder Jeff Salazar pointed me toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[931],"tags":[375,8468,1843],"class_list":["post-37278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-sports","tag-baseball","tag-charlie-montoyo","tag-richard-ford"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n