The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Home cooking helps alleviate loss
The postgame spread helped soothe the pain of the Captains’ loss to the Whitecaps. “One day each month during the season, we let the players choose the meal and prepare it,” Manager Luke Carlin said.
From a baseball standpoint, there wasn’t much for the Lake County Captains to savor in a 8-3 loss to the West Michigan Whitecaps on April 26 at Classic Park.
They came up on the short end in a long, untidy game that produced a combined 24 strikeouts, 12 walks and 20 stranded baserunners on 362 pitches by seven pitchers.
West Michigan (12-6) never looked back after getting to Lake County starter and eventual loser Grant Hockin (1-3, 6.27 ERA) for six runs in the top of the fourth inning. The Captains (10-9) managed three runs on 13 hits, one of them a solo home run by Tyler Friis.
The Whitecaps salvaged the finale of a four-game series after three straight losses to the Captains. Included in those losses was a seven-inning no-hitter co-authored by Captains pitchers Francisco Perez and James Karinchak on April 25 in a 3-0 win.
If the series finale left a bad taste in the mouths of Captains manager Luke Carlin and his players, the postgame spread had the opposite effect.
Waiting for the Captains when they returned to the home clubhouse was a Latin-influened meal prepared by pitchers Domingo Jimenez and Gregori Vasquez, both natives of the Dominican Republic.
On the menu were two kinds of rice, savory pork, stewed chicken (pollo de quisado), and two salads.
Strength coach Juan Acevedo said he had accompanied Jimenez and Vasquez on a shopping trip to the nearby Walmart in Eastlake to procure the fixings. Carlin said the event was called “Latin Day” and was a continuation of a practice he established last season while managing many of the same players at short-season SingleA Mahoning Valley.
“One day each month during the season, we let the players choose the meal and prepare it. We do it win, lose or draw,” Carlin said, smiling.
Jimenez and Vasquez were granted permission to be in the clubhouse during the game to prepare the meal.
The smiles on the faces of the players while waiting in line for Carlin to take the first servings and the quiet in the room as everyone ate spoke volumes about the satisfaction level with the home cooking.
No one was more eager to dig in than Carlin, who remembered his introduction to Latin-influenced food from Ramon Pena, a native of the Dominican Republic and Carlin’s teammate at Northeastern University. Both would eventually make it to the big leagues.
Carlin said he made numerous weekend trips to the Pena family home in Massachusetts, where Pena’s mother cooked meals that introduced Carlin’s tastebuds to a tempting array of new food preparations and flavors.
Five seasons of playing winter ball in the Dominican Republic sealed Carlin’s yen for Latin-style food. He fondly recalled preparing pollo de quisado on a Food Network TV show while playing for the San Diego Padres in 2008.
Carlin nodded enthusiastically in the affirmative when asked if his players could expect monthly home-cooking events through the remainder of this season.