And who the hell cuts your hair? An epileptic?
The whites don’t know how to put it in
Guachupita has an endearing name and ferocious guts.
The neighborhood is dense, and there are shootings and drug trafficking, a vesper of souls who live together in austere houses, under tarpaulins and metal sheet roofs, and huddles a step away from the Ozama, the river that bathes Santo sunday
(…)
In Santo Domingo they play pelota (baseball), but Rodolfo Feliz preferred basketball, and that’s why every Sunday he got in the car, left Guachupita and went to the pier, to play 3×3 games.
Sometimes he took Andrés, the third of his six children, who followed him in wonder.
And even though Andrés was barely three years old, even then, seeing his father write down, his eyes lit up like oranges.
This explains to me:
-Basketball took me away from the bad РAndr̩s Feliz (25) tells me.
And he says yes with his head.
Today he is a recognized basketball player, a professional basketball player, and he earns well, and supports his family in Badalona (his wife, Lisa, and little Drelen, who is already thirteen months old) and helps his family in Guachupita, the parents and sisters and brothers, and when he returns to the neighborhood, in the summer months, he brings them sneakers, socks and shirts, everything he has left over.
– Because I only have two feet. I don’t need so many sneakers. And if I can give a smile and help others have the opportunity I had…
– And when he returns to Guachupita, does he play basketball?
– Slave, with friends. And someone wears a t-shirt with my name on it, that of the University of Illinois, or that of Joventut, or that of the Dominican national team.
(A month ago, the Dominicans earned their place in next summer’s World Cup, after knocking off the runner-up, Argentina, in Mar del Plata, in the last match of the qualifiers, with Andrés Feliz in a leading role: eleven points .)
And I ask him:
– And how did you, a professional basketball player, with a degree in Sociology in Illinois, cannon fodder in your neighborhood manage to get ahead?
– I really liked basketball. And also study.
And he remembers himself on the court of his school, the Rafael Leónidas Solano club, alone shooting a basket, before the others arrived and also afterwards, before the spotlights went out.
-As a child it was like this: me with my cheap ball, broken fingers, we used to tell him.
–…?
-It was made of very bad material, and as it bounced, it deformed. But I didn’t always have the clue for me or my friends. When the big guys came, they took over the track and wouldn’t let us in.
– I hi havia trashtalking ?
– Much more than in professional matches! Even before the games started, on the way to the court, we talked about everything. We played to 16 points. And if the score was 8-0, KO, end. Sometimes the matches lasted three minutes. Or less And there were no referees. We decided.
– And what happened to friends, those colleagues in the neighborhood, or basketball?
– Some died. Others ended up imprisoned. I already told him that basketball rescued me. Basketball and my parents, Rodolfo, who repairs air conditioners or washing machines, and Teresa Sarita, a housewife. They all tried to guide me on the right path and prevented me from doing anything wrong.
(He emphasizes: “You don’t know how grateful I am to Teresa Durán and Fran Parreño, my first coaches, for betting on me; mention them, please”.)
– And what does he tell me about other Dominicans in basketball, like Chicho Sibilio, who succeeded in Spain, or Luis Felipe López, who was a star in the NBA?
– I heard about them, but I didn’t have the chance to see them play. Although Luis Felipe López belongs to a more recent era, we didn’t have satellite TV at home. Then, as a teenager, I learned about their stories.
Today I see Andrés Feliz, starting point guard for Joventut, play, and when this happens, I understand his courageous vocation, his sense of struggle.
