PHOTO BY DANIEL LI PPI TT

A product of intermarriage,
a Tiger reliever made a choice
about his religion.

PAUL HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

e gets odd looks the first
time people see him.
It's something about the
combination of his black
skin and the Star of David
around his neck that just
seems odd. But Detroit
Tiger relief pitcher Jose Bautista has
grown quite accustomed to that reac-
tion.
"They say, 'You're Jewish?' " he
laughed. "Players say, 'You're a Do-
minican Jew?"
They can't believe it but that's the
case. Bautista's mother's family was
among those Jews who fled Russia in
1939 to escape Hitler. Many went to
Latin American destinations: Cuba,
Venezuela, Argentina and the Domini-
can Republic. Bautista, 32, was born in
Bani in the Dominican Republic, where
his mother had settled with his Catholic
father.
One of 16 children, Bautista says he
chose Judaism over Catholicism be-
cause of the close relationship he had
with his mother, who is now deceased.
`They were really quiet about it," said
Bautista of his mother's religion. "My
dad's Dominican. She'd do the Jewish
stuff and my dad was doing the Christ-
mas stuff and things like that."
But this product of intermarriage is

the head of a to-
tally Jewish fam-
ily. That's be-
cause his wife.
Lea, is from one
of the Jewish
families who set-
tled in
Venezuela. The
Bautistas have
three children,
Leo, 15, Jose, 11,
and Jessenia, 14
months. Leo and
Jose attend He-
brew school in
the couple's off-
season home of
Weston, Fla.
"I just prefer to go with my Jew-
ish wife and my religion, like my
mother wanted me to," said Bautista,
who's in his 17th season of profes-
sional baseball. Four of his brothers also
played professional baseball.
The Tigers are his fourth major
league team. He also played with the
Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs and
San Francisco Giants. But it was a long
and arduous climb for him before he
ever stood on a big-league mound.
Signed by the New York Mets as a
non-drafted free agent in April, 1981,

Jose Bautista has to wait his turn
as a relief pitcher.

Bautista spent seven seasons in the
Mets' minor-league system. From 1981-
87, he pitched in such outposts as
Kingsport, Tenn. Sarasota, Fla., Co-
lumbia, S.C., Lynchburg, Va., and Jack-
son, Texas.
The Baltimore Orioles gave him his
first chance at the majors when they se-
lected him in the Rule 5 major league
draft in December, 1987. Rule 5 allows
teams to select players from other

teams' minor league rosters. But the
catch is that the player has to stay on
the major league roster for a year. If
they try to send him to the minors, he
has to be offered back to his old organi-
zation.
So the Orioles kept the 6-2, 205-
pound righthander for the entire 1988
season. In fact, Bautista was their
busiest starting pitcher.
But there's a catch. That Baltimore
team lost a major-league record 21
straight games to start the season and

SIX POINTED STAR page 92