Food

A Morning in the Kitchen With the Grandmother Who Cooks for Major League Baseball Players


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The first words out of Altagracia Alvino’s mouth after opening the door to the apartment and hearing my hello were abrupt. “Shh,” she said. “El nene está durmiendo.” The kid is sleeping. Whoops.

Alvino was referring to her grandson, Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., one of baseball’s brightest young stars. He was still slumbering in the other room. Normally, she cooks without an audience after she wakes up at 7 a.m. But on this recent morning, photographer Tara Walton and I were in attendance.

We slipped inside and quietly watched as Alvino prepared a feast of white rice with stewed goat meat and beans. Alvino, 66, has been doing this for nearly two decades: cooking food for her baseball-playing kinnotably her son, Vladimir Sr., who was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year, and his son, Vladimir Jr. — plus their teammates and visiting players.

I had written about this tradition before, in 2014 when I covered baseball at The Washington Post. Learning from the example of Alvino and Vladimir Sr., several Dominican players in the major leagues had an informal food-sharing network in which the home players brought comfort food to the stadium for their teammates and visiting rivals, many of whom were far from their homelands in Latin America.

I wasn’t intending to write about food in baseball again. But when I noticed something while covering my beat, the Yankees, I had a sudden revelation of how to tackle this in a distinct and compelling way. The Yankees were in Toronto earlier this season playing the Blue Jays when I saw pitcher Luis Severino carrying a plastic container of rice and beans inside the visitor’s clubhouse. Instantly, I had a hunch Vladimir Sr.’s son and mother had something to do with it.

I asked Severino and other players, and they all confirmed that Vladimir Jr., 20, who had only reached the major leagues in April, was already following in his family’s example by sharing delicacies cooked by his grandmother. So I thought: The story is Alvino, the backbone of their family and the person who was still bringing so much joy to baseball players more than 20 years after she had first begun cooking for them. My editors, Randy Archibold and Joel Petterson, supported the idea.

This is the type of story The Times’s sports section relishes sharing with readers. It touches on themes larger than the Blue Jays or baseball itself. It has to do with culture, food, families and nostalgia. All can relate. It made me remember the love of my grandmothers when they were alive, sharing meals with them and how culture was passed down through traditional dishes.

But I didn’t know Vladimir Jr. well. I had talked to him just once before, for a story about baseball in the Dominican Republic, his baseball-crazed homeland. So I called his agent; we spoke a handful of times, and eventually a date to visit Alvino in Toronto was scheduled. By the time I knocked on the door of the apartment she shares with her husband and Vladimir Jr. during the season, I had talked to several players who had eaten her food over the years. All Tara and I needed to do was soak up as many details as possible of Alvino and her cooking.

We wanted a recipe to run with the story, but Alvino couldn’t share any formal ones since she rarely measured anything, the process was in her head and she was so used to cooking for 20 people at a time, not two or four. There were clues about her secrets in the story, though.

As the food cooked, Alvino sat and talked to me, but still in a hushed voice. Her husband, Damian, 69, woke up soon thereafter and sat on the couch to read the Bible. Vladimir Jr. arose around 11 a.m. He drank coffee while signing several dozen stickers for memorabilia and read the Bible before leaving for the stadium. Alvino packed several large containers of the food into two bags, which her husband helped Vladimir Jr. carry out of the apartment.

Later that day, Tara and I met up with Alvino and her husband at Rogers Centre. But before we left the apartment around noon, Alvino insisted we try the food. I tried to politely decline because it wasn’t intended for me. She wasn’t having it.

“So you know what you’re writing about,” she said as she served us. Hopefully it showed.

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