Rest in peace, brother

This Friday was one of the saddest days of my life. Last night, when I finished writing about the Judge vs. Raleigh challenge, I began writing an essay about legendary Cuban pitcher Diego Seguí, who sadly passed away last Tuesday at the age of 87.

I was truly exhausted. When I woke up this Friday, my wife Ruth was at the foot of the bed, waiting to give me the terrible news that my dear friend Juan Carlos Díaz Valera had passed away. The news surprised me because we had exchanged a couple of messages last night, and he was feeling better. “Juank,” as his friends and many acquaintances called him, was recovering after undergoing surgery. His diabetes hadn't recovered, and that was fatal.

Every day, we talked about how important it was to keep the faith and do everything possible to maintain consistency with my medication. We smiled because Juank kept reminding me that he was the one who discovered my diabetic symptoms. It was in 2016 when I told him how I'd felt the night before. That afternoon, we were sitting in the dugout at the Estadio Latinoamericano, minutes before the first game of the Industriales vs. Santiago de Cuba series began.

I took some photos of the warmup before the first pitch, and when I climbed the stairs to the dugout, I was a little thirsty. This was normal for me, given the high temperatures at field level at noon. But Juank was seeing the symptoms very clearly, like when he was able to predict how a great at-bat would end before the batter even came to the plate. And so it was. From that afternoon on, my life changed completely. I had to change many of my habits and undergo a treatment that, thank God, has become a new way of life for me.

We talked about this from time to time, remembering how we were doing our best to overcome this terrible illness every day. We talked last night, like we do almost every day. I noticed his voice cracking when he told me he'd suffered from hypoglycemia, which worried me. But he told me he was fine, and we continued talking about baseball for a bit.

So the news this morning surprised me. I don't think we're ever prepared to hear news of that magnitude, especially knowing that just a few hours earlier, my great friend Juank was alive and thinking about returning to work. It's very difficult to process everything in such a shocking way.

My wife, Ruth, and I knew Juank wasn't well. But he was fighting to recover. The big problem was that his diabetes deteriorated. He went into a coma and couldn't recover from it. I'm writing this, and it all seems like a nightmare. Juank had turned 60 last April 3rd. He was still ready to score many more baseball games. Numbers were his passion: scoring games and keeping track of play-by-play while sharing the conversation with everyone around him.

I remember the day we met as if it were yesterday. I was covering the Antillana de Acero Cup for the first time—it was its 13th edition—held in the municipality of Cotorro in Havana. The Cups began in the early 1990s and became very popular due to the quality of the participating teams. The Industriales and Metropolitanos teams were the hosts, along with Isla de la Juventud and Habana. Also participating were Pinar del Río, Cienfuegos, a team from the Antillana de Acero steel company, and other invited teams.

The Santiago de Cuba team also participated a couple of times and generated great expectations. They all faced each other a couple of weeks before the start of the National Series. The tournament basically always served as a training base, and traditionally, each team would put together its roster after the cup.

Thanks to another great friend, Yoerlis Soffi, who was in charge of statistics and scoring, I was invited to work at the event. On the first day, I met Carlos Soler, the official scorer for the Vaqueros del Habana since the early 2000s. It was November 2004, and a little over five months had passed since I had scored my first official game. Soler and I quickly connected.

He scored the game for the Vaqueros, and I acted as the tournament official, including summarizing the statistics for the Industriales team. Everyone was amazed to know I could do all this as a veteran. I was only 14 years old when I scored my first official baseball game. I had already turned 15 in that Antillana Cup.

Soler told me he wouldn't be coming to the next game, which would be Industriales vs. Habana. Soler shared the scorekeeping duties with Juank, whom I met the next day, when the Vaqueros beat the Leones 4-2 with a great pitch from the young right-hander Kenny Rodríguez. I'll never forget that afternoon. I had the lineups on my desk, and when I looked to my left, Juank was coming in. Because of his height, he had to lower his head to avoid hitting a dividing tube in the broadcast booth. When he came in and I stood up to extend my hand, he asked me:

“Are you Sandy?”—that's what my closest friends used to call me, shortening my name by removing the “Yir.”

“And I quickly replied, yes. And from what Soler told me, you must be Juank.”

He quickly smiled, shook my hand, and before sitting down, the first thing he did was give me a pen. I thanked him excitedly, and we shared the game lineups to begin filling out our scoresheets. I said, “He’ll be making his debut today,” pointing to the pen. And Juank, with that natural wisdom and charisma, replied, “I think you’re going to use this pen a lot more,” pointing to a worn red BIC ballpoint pen. In Cuban baseball scoring culture, that had a meaning. And, of course, I had to smile. What’s that all about? The red pen is basically used to record all offensive actions that don’t constitute an at-bat, such as walks, all sacrifices, hit batters, or catcher’s interference.

That led me to ask Juank, “Do you think the Cowboys pitchers are going to issue a lot of walks today?” The question was obvious, given what Juank told me about the excessive use of the color red, he was trying to predict. But he turned around in his wooden chair with great style and said, “I know you’re well aware of everything that’s recorded in red, but today I’ll use the red pen to record the strikeouts.”

I inevitably had to smile, and then ask him about the skills and qualities of right-hander Kenny Rodríguez, whom I had seen pitch a couple of times in the 43rd National Series. “He’s the most promising pitcher we have on the staff, along with Miguel Alfredo González.” Then the game began, and it was my turn to score and, at the same time, dictate the play-by-play for Soffi to process in the scoring system from the office. Every few plays, he would look at my score sheet, checking how I was doing.

Industriales scored two runs in the first inning with RBI singles by Yohandry Urgellés and Alexander Malleta. In the bottom half, the Vaqueros responded by tying the score at 2-2, and an inning later, they added another run. The game reached the top of the sixth inning, 3-2 in favor of the Vaqueros. When the fifth inning ended, I stopped for a few seconds to chat with Senén Cuevas, another good friend who was in charge of addressing the press.

The booths at the Antillana de Acero in those years were separated by a door that remained open. To the left sat the audio technician and Senén, who also worked as the game announcer. At that moment, Juank was making a phone call to Nelson Fernández Stadium. The game then continued, and Juank gave me a lot of advice. He told me how he scored, inspired by his cousin Pedro Luis Rodríguez, a former star catcher and manager of the Vaqueros during the late 1990s. But it wasn't until the next day that I was surprised. It turns out that during that pause in play during the bottom of the fifth inning, Juank called Soler and reaffirmed what he'd been told.

Soler smiled and said, “(Sandy), when I told Juank that you were 15 years old and scored like a veteran, he thought I was joking. But then, when we were hanging out yesterday, he called me and said, 'Hey, I thought you were joking, but the kid really scores. And he scores well!”

Thus began a friendship that will never end, even though this Friday, Juank left us physically in the unexpected game of life. I've had the great fortune to make friends wherever I've been. I thank God for that. But among all the great friends I have, Juank has always been one of the most special. We worked together for years and built a team that was always a brotherhood, along with Reinier Lugones, Mario Trujillo, and our beloved Amarilidia Rodríguez, who has continued the work we did with such dedication for years.

Below, in the center, my great friend Juan Carlos Díaz, "Juank," is ready for the second game of a doubleheader during the 2014 season at the Latinoamericano stadium.

We scored a lot of baseball. We shared difficult situations and moments in life. Between 2005 and 2012, we worked together every day. When we didn't meet on the field, we talked on the phone from stadium to stadium or exchanged emails recounting strange plays and interesting game situations we had to unravel.

Then, starting in 2012, we worked together as a scoring duo at Estadio Latinoamericano. We saw many pitches together, many outs, many exciting hits, and great rallies. We scored marathons and gave so much effort that we could tell a thousand stories. During the 2008-2009 season, I remember that the umpires and the official scorer (Juank at the time, since Soler was working abroad) who were supposed to work at the Nelson Fernández Stadium in San José de Las Lajas were staying in Havana. So there were countless times I traveled to support Juank in his games.

Two years later, in 2010, the lighting at Estadio Latinoamericano began to fail, and all the games of the season were in the afternoon. I would score the games with my partner Aldo Gómez, another of our great teachers. And then, at night, when there were games in San José, I would go with Juank to the stadium. I helped him score and process games in the National Series system.

In my 35 years, I've met so many people through baseball that I couldn't possibly have complete control. But among them all, I could easily pick out the person I had never seen upset and who was always smiling at every stadium. That person was Juank. I always admired Juank's mental strength, his humility, his natural ability to tell stories, and, above all, his sincerity in any situation. I never saw him mistreat anyone. I never saw him say “no” to a job offer, especially if it involved scoring baseball. I never saw him commit any injustice. I think we were a great team, sort of like father and son, because many of our feelings were similar.

Juank liked to take a sip of rum, but he never reneged on his duties. He liked to listen to music during games, which wasn't one of my habits. But I listened to her and barely realized she was to my right, working to the beat of Benny Moré or Rubén Blades. “Buscando América,” by Blades and Seis del Solar, was one of her favorite songs, as was the music of Celia Cruz and all those Cubans who have become legends around the world.

Sometimes we had to carry the computer and monitor up a flight of stairs to get to the scoreboard at Estadio Latinoamericano, during one of the many times the elevator wasn't working. Juank would turn those vertigo-inducing moments into a musical symphony, like a reliever who pats the starter, promises to end the pressure, and ultimately manages to prevent the score from being tied.

That's why I was so sad when Juank told me, in his cracked voice, that he was having trouble with an injury to his right foot. It was the first time in more than 20 years that I'd heard him like that. So I understood perfectly what was happening. It was a devastating process that broke our hearts. Ruth and I prayed for him every day, and we truly never lost faith that our brother Juank would recover.

God chose not to let it happen, and now he's in his divine kingdom. It will be very difficult to open my WhatsApp and never see another message from him. I will forever miss our baseball conversations and all the work we shared daily. There will be a deep void in my soul because one of my greatest friends has passed away. One of those people who lifted your spirits with his motivational quotes.

In life, sometimes we waste a lot of time away from the people we care about. I thank God for giving me the blessing of sharing so much with my dear friend Juank.

You always told me not to stop writing. To tell stories and unleash my passion like I used to. But I didn't expect to have to write so soon after your passing.

Thank you for your brotherhood with me and my family, your unconditional support, and your humility. You'll always be in our hearts until the end of our days. And God willing, we'll be able to see each other again. I'm sure we will.

Rest in peace, brother.