By Frank Burns

6/7/2009: Yuma, AZ – Duluth lost one of the players on its team last week, as SS José Alfonso went down to a career-ending labrum tear.  "It's sad, the way it happened," opined GM Joel Dobney, pouring cheap vodka into a half-empty Gatorade bottle.  "He was never one of our best players, but he was reliable and a steady presence in the clubhouse.”  Indeed, a quick poll of the 17 Duluth players, 8 staff members and 2 coaches in the locker room at the time revealed nary a cross word to be spoken about the 25-year-old Mexican.  To fully understand how Alfonso's career ended, one first must journey back to how it began.

"When he got here, Alf couldn't communicate with anyone," remembers Pat Holman, "but that had been the case wherever he went.  The language barrier was just too much.”  One would assume that, with Alfonso being Mexican, the language would be Spanish and some of Duluth's Hispanic players and clubhouse members could ease the transition for the home sick middle infielder.  We all know what happens when we assume though.  The only language Alfonso spoke upon his arrival in Duluth was not Spanish, but was in fact German.  "That made it rough," said 1B Dave Morrison.  "Really, really rough.  Opposing players tormented him with taunts of 'Mexi-Nazi' and 'Wetback Führer'.  He had it bad.”  Comfort came in the form of Alfonso's only piece of home that came with him to Duluth: his beloved miniature kitten Mittens

"That cat went everywhere with him his rookie year," said Dobney.  "I remember one time he was jogging off the field after going headfirst into home (he scored), and I went down to the dugout to meet him and lecture him about how he could break a finger doing that.  I don't know how much he understood, but he responded by opening his rear pocket and pulling out Mittens.  I was floored by the bond between the two as he stood there in the dugout whispering to her in German."

Inspired by the companionship of his feline friend, Alfonso posted a respectable .715 OPS and 14.0 VORP in 356 AB in 2007.  "He wasn't a world-beater that year, but we didn't need him to be," said Dobney.  "He was just a kid getting adjusted to our culture and the speed of the professional game, and he was home sick as heck.  I'm proud of the year he put up and the effort he made to become acclimated with Duluth.  We thought he could grow into a fixture with the club."

Part of that effort, sadly, spelled José's undoing.  Trying to bond with the community, the shy 24-year-old decided to spend his winter in Duluth.  On one of his evening walks around his neighborhood with Mittens something spooked the cat, sending it up a nearby tree.  Try as he might, Alfonso could not coax the cat out of the upper branches, nor could his broken Germglish summon the fire department's aid.  Despondent, he stood under the tree all night and watched the dawn reveal that his beloved friend and faithful cat has passed away in the night due to exposure.  Crushed, he mailed himself back to Mexico in an extra-large box the very next day to bury Mittens with her ancestors.

"We didn't know where he went; we were so worried.  We couldn't get a hold of him all winter and his house was clearly abandoned.”  Dobney continued: "We were all just so relieved when he showed up for Spring Training.”  Though he had added eight pounds of lean muscle, Alfonso was clearly not the same player.  He went out of his way to forge bonds with his teammates, only to weep bitterly when the attrition of the business of baseball took its toll on his friends.  "Injuries, trades, unruly fans; it all affected José in a way it hadn't before," said a Duluth player whose name we didn't catch.  "His heart was clearly broken for Mittens, and it showed on and off the field.  He blamed himself."

This season, Alfonso had taken to walking alone through the streets of Duluth's residential areas before and after games.  It was on one of these walks that, according to witnesses, his career ended.  "You see, there was a kitten stuck in a tree," said Gareth Brandt, a 34-year-old construction worker who saw the incident unfold.  "A big bird was just a-toying with it before it was going to kill it and eat it, and a little girl was beneath the tree crying and yelling for help.”  Brandt, who recently had both wrists crushed by an I-beam, was home convalescing and powerless to help.  What happened next stunned everyone within sighting distance.  "Then that Mexican fella done what he done.”

What José Alfonso "done" was to grab a stone from the gravel driveway at his feet and, from a distance conservatively estimated by Brandt as "at least a quarter-mile", throw the stone with pinpoint accuracy, killing the bird while leaving the kitten unscathed.  Then Alfonso used his cell phone to tell the fire department the one English phrase that he has repeated to himself for a year and a half: "Kitten in a tree, please send help!”  Satisfied that his work was done, José knelt on the sidewalk and wept, not from the pain in his arm but from that in his heart.

While the PEBA at large would have let the passing of another marginal major leaguer go unnoticed, the Duluth community wanted more for Alfonso.  As he recovers from labrum surgery, he has already been granted a position at the Duluth chapter of the ASPCA and has turned down a similar off from PETA.  While his career on the diamond was derailed by heartbreak and ultimately injury, it was in the final, darkest hour of his baseball career that José Alfonso found redemption.

RIP: Mittens (6/21/2006 – 12/23/2007)