April 1, 2012
Andrew Anderson, The Hometown Gazette

The number 57 is not a traditional baseball number.

The player wearing that number fielding ground balls at third base as the sun sets at the end of spring training does not look like a traditional baseball player.

There’s nothing traditional about how José Montaño has arrived at the big leagues with the Connecticut Nutmeggers.  But he’s here – and that’s more than he’s ever dreamed of.

“Some players come in, get their work done and leave right when they’re done to get home,” Montaño said.  “But I know that every day I get to wear a Nutmeggers jersey is a special day.

“I don’t want to take off this jersey.”

The team-issued spring training jersey may not seem like much, but that itself is almost more than the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic native has ever had.

One of eight children growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Santo Domingo, Montaño never knew there was anything out there for him.  After his mother and father both passed away due to illness within three months of each other when Montaño was 12 years old, he couldn’t afford to spend time thinking about the future.

“I am one of the oldest children in my family,” Montaño said.  “It was up to me to stay strong and provide for my brothers and sisters.

“That’s just the way it was.  I knew nothing else, thought of nothing else.”

The Montaño clan was shuttled around to various relatives after the tragic deaths of Esteban and Maria Montaño.  Never knowing if a warm meal or a safe bed was going to be available for longer than a week, José Montaño learned to live in the present.

“I remember going door-to-door begging for food, pleading for something to eat for me and my seven brothers and sisters,” Montaño recalled, eyes glistening.  “I got a lot of doors slammed in my face.  People called me names, chased me through the streets, called me a ‘rat’.

“But I had to keep going.  If I didn’t find food, we didn’t eat.”

Saddled with so much responsibility before he was a teenager meant that some things had to go by the wayside, as he was suddenly charged with caring for an entire family.  His schooling ended abruptly, one of the things that Montaño was most passionate about growing up.

“I loved school,” he explained.  “I was so hungry to learn, to find a better life, but I had to give it up.”

One thing – probably the only thing – that remained constant for Montaño throughout the turbulent time was baseball.  The game is wildly popular in Santo Domingo due to the fact that you can play it with no expensive equipment or any experience.

Always one of the better players in the street games, Montaño said he never knew that baseball could be his ticket to a better life – for himself and for his family.

“I just played to have fun,” he explained.  “I played whenever I could.  It was my only chance to be a kid.”

But as he got older and older, people began to take notice of the gangly kid with the cannon for an arm and jets on his feet.

When he was 19 years old, Montaño remembers seeing a man who looked “out of place” watching him play in the schoolyard.

“He kept talking about this new league being formed in the United States,” Montaño said.  “I had never heard of the United States.  I thought he was trying to play a trick on me.

“But I listened, and I decided to trust what he said – that I could play baseball for a living, and it could help my family.”

So the kid who learned English by memorizing baseball terms and using them while playing in the streets signed a professional baseball contract with the then-New Jersey Gothic Knights organization – and he was off to America.

“Of course I was scared,” he said.  “I had to leave home.  Leave my family.  Leave everything I ever knew on simply hope.

“I knew nobody when I got to the United States.  I couldn’t imagine anyone being lonelier, but I kept pressing on.  I kept playing baseball.  It’s what kept me going back in the Dominican, and I was grateful to be playing it at the highest level.”

Montaño spent 2007 and 2008 at the single-A levels in the minor leagues, plugging away and turning a few heads in the process.

“This kid was never the most gifted player out there,” Union City Hillers manager Eric Gilliam said.  “He just wasn’t.  I wasn’t sure he was going to make it long-term in the game, but he was.  He was sure.  And I’ll be darned; he wasn’t going to let anybody stand in his way.”

The New Jersey organization traded him to Connecticut in September of 2008.  It turned out that this move paved the way for his improbable rise to the major leagues.

He played at the upper levels of the minors at the end of 2008 and 2009, and in 2010, Montaño got the call that changed his life.

“They said I was going to be playing with the big club,” Montaño said.  “I couldn’t believe it.  It was just supposed to be a way to help my family, but baseball paved the way for so, so much more.

“A big leaguer,” he said, shaking his head and smiling.  “Me.  A Connecticut Nutmegger.”

He played in 146 games for the Nutmeggers in 2010, hitting .248 and stealing 10 bases.  As a second-year player in 2011, Montaño developed a little bit of power, hitting 19 home runs and driving in 100 runs.  He raised his batting average nearly 30 points to .277, and he swiped 13 more bases.

In spring training 2012, you would have thought Montaño was fighting for the last spot on the roster.  He’s the last one to leave the batting cages every day, and he’ll field ground balls until someone tells him to get out of the way so they can pull the tarp on the field.

At the ripe age of 25, Montaño has even taken it upon himself to teach the newcomers a thing or two about the game.

Now on the eve of his third season in the big leagues, Montaño still doesn’t take anything for granted.  He hustles out ground balls.  He plays hard every play.  As he gets closer to earning his first real big league paycheck, Montaño is still the same guy who at the age of 12 was taking care of his brothers and sisters back in the poorest part of Santo Domingo.

“I owe so much to the Nutmeggers organization,” he said.  “They gave me my start.  They gave me a chance at a better life.”

Montaño said that his family is doing well back home.  He talks to his siblings whenever possible, and he gets back home as often as he can.

But at the same time, he now knows that he has a new role – and that is as a third baseman for the Connecticut Nutmeggers.

He’s determined to stay that for a long time.  He doesn’t want to let anybody down.

As Montaño leaves the locker room at the end of spring training, he pauses as he gets to his locker.  The simple, uninspiring metal box.

He looks at his nameplate – the plain plastic sign that reads “Montaño”.

After reading the name he’s read countless times before, Montaño looks around the otherwise empty locker room.

“This,” he said, as his eyes take in the scene.  “This is home.”