Dominican Heat

Ramon Ortiz, the Angels’ top pitching prospect, had 10 pesos in hand and decided to take a chance. He had spent another long day pulling weeds in a Dominican Republic rice field and was on his way home when he stopped to buy a lottery ticket.

He won 280 pesos, quite a wad for a 7-year-old who already had spent a year working in the fields to help his family survive.

“I felt like a millionaire,” Ortiz, now 23, said through an interpreter. “We were in desperate need of money. I gave it all to my mommy so she could buy food and clothes.”

It doesn’t seem that long ago to Ortiz.

He would work long hours in the fields, then chase after his eight older brothers, trying to play baseball just like them.

Ortiz shared the dream of almost every boy in the Dominican Republic: to be a major league baseball player. Few make it. None of his brothers did. Now, Ortiz is tantalizingly close.

He has rocketed--like his 95-mph fastball--through the Angel minor league system, reaching triple-A Edmonton. He has been compared to Boston’s Pedro Martinez, which he doesn’t discourage, and has survived tougher tests than those between the foul lines.

With the Angels’ plummeting from the American League West Division race, Ortiz’s promotion to Anaheim seems imminent.

It has been a long journey in a short time. To understand just how important baseball is to him, one need only know his mother, Cleotilde, who told Ortiz to quit his job when he was 16 so he could concentrate on pitching.

“My mommy used to give me money so I could play,” Ortiz said. “We didn’t have a lot of money. Whenever I played, wherever I played, my papi was always there. I would pray to God to help me become a baseball player.

“My mommy keeps telling me that I will be a big league pitcher. It is one of the things that has kept me going, my mommy’s faith.”

*

Faith, for Ortiz, was necessary.

No one in the Angel organization knew what to expect from the right-hander this season. He missed almost all of last season with a stress fracture in his right elbow.

Ortiz was blessed with a powerful throwing arm. In 1997, when he went 11-10 at Class-A Cedar Rapids, he struck out 225, the most by a minor league pitcher since 1986, and pitched a no-hitter against Quad City.

But Ortiz was limited to seven games last season because of the injury. He didn’t need surgery, but the Angels weren’t sure what condition Ortiz would be in when he returned from the Dominican Republic last spring.

“Last fall, we kept him here through the instructional league, until his visa ran out,” said Jeff Parker, the Angels’ director of player development. “There aren’t a lot of health clinics down there. He bounced back quicker than we thought. We started getting reports he was throwing rocks to strengthen his arm.”

The Angels might want to incorporate that into their training program.

Ortiz started 0-4 this season, which Angel officials blame on the extensive dental work he had during spring training. He then won nine straight decisions and had a 2.82 earned-run average for double-A Erie before being promoted to Edmonton.

“I credit God’s intervention for me being able to pitch again,” Ortiz said.

It took more than divine intervention to fix his teeth. Ortiz spent a long day in the dentist’s chair during spring training, which cost the Angels a few thousand dollars.

“We were catching up on his dental work,” Parker said. “There is no fluoride in the water down there. You see a lot of kids eating raw sugar cane. But I worry more about his arm than his mouth.”

Sure, but Parker didn’t have to rinse and spit.

“It was the worst thing I ever went through,” Ortiz said. “In hindsight, it was a blessing from God. They fixed my teeth and I think it gave me more velocity.”

Whatever works.

Included in his nine-game winning streak this season was a one-hitter against Altoona.

“He gave up a hit down the right-field line, then came back and got the last six batters,” Erie Manager Garry Templeton said. “That’s the game that really convinced me this kid had a bright future. He was unhittable. You don’t see a guy go through the lineup like that too often at this level.”

The Angels, though, are cautious and they have a right to be. Their minor league system hasn’t produced a quality starting pitcher since Kirk McCaskill and Chuck Finley in the mid-1980s.

General Manager Bill Bavasi said last month Ortiz wouldn’t be called up until the Angels were scoring more runs, so as not to put more pressure on him.

That could take awhile.

“The big reason we moved him to triple A was to give him more of a challenge,” Parker said. “He’s starting to get the idea he’s going to get to pitch in the big leagues. We want to go slow. We consider Ramon a No. 1 starter in the future.”

The future, and Ortiz, might not wait. He hasn’t dominated triple A, but he is 4-2 with a 4.02 ERA and 53 strikeouts in 40 1/3 innings. In his second start, he set a team record with 13 strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings.

“The biggest difference in triple A is the hitters have more experience,” Ortiz said. “I am still confident in getting them out. I don’t have to make any major adjustments.”

Ortiz’s slight frame--he is 6 feet, 165 pounds--and bullet-train velocity brought the Martinez comparisons almost immediately. It was too easy.

Both are from the Dominican Republic. Both have mid-90s fastballs and wicked sliders. Martinez, in fact, taught Ortiz the slider, when they were teammates with the Licey Los Tigres, a Dominican League winter team, in 1996.

“Ramon has that kind of arm,” said Bob Fontaine, the Angels’ director of player personnel. “But I think it’s unfair to compare him to Pedro. Ramon is his own person. He’s going to do great things.”

Ortiz doesn’t mind the talk. In fact, he stops just short of encouraging it.

“Pedro is my idol,” Ortiz said. “It makes me feel good when people compare me to him. Instead of putting pressure on me, it helps me become a better pitcher. I want to be better than Pedro in the future.”

*

Faith, sometimes, is all you have.

Getting here from the Dominican Republic hasn’t been easy. But, then, living there wasn’t, either.

Ortiz grew up in a family where there was never enough to spread among 13 children. Never enough food or clothes or money.

His mother sewed. His father, Alfonso Ortiz, was a tow truck driver. Ramon went to work in the fields. His education stopped after his freshman year in high school.

There was baseball or there was a hard life.

Ortiz, who is from the town of Cotui, did his best to emulate his brothers. He started as the batboy for their local team, then became a second baseman.

Only one of Ortiz’s brothers signed with a major league team. Benny Ortiz got as high as double A with the San Francisco Giants.

When Ramon was 13, the way he blistered the ball to first base made the change to pitcher necessary. There was still a long way to go.

“I would get up at 5 a.m. every morning to go to work in the fields,” Ortiz said. “We were very poor and we needed everything. But I never gave up my dream to be a professional baseball player.

“I would get off work and run through the neighborhood. That’s how I trained. I was a very skinny kid and the neighbors would always yell, ‘Why are you doing this, you’re not going to amount to anything.’ My mommy would never let me get discouraged. I knew I had to work hard.”

The hard work helps. A live arm helps even more.

Teams began to take notice when Ortiz was 17. At that time, the Angels’ Dominican operation didn’t even qualify as bare bones. It was more ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust.

But they had an edge. The baseball community in the Dominican Republic is tight and Ortiz was a fan of former Angel Luis Polonia--”I consider him like another brother,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz signed in 1995. He pitched for the Angels’ Dominican Summer League team, going 8-6 with a 2.23 ERA and 100 strikeouts in 97 innings.

It doesn’t seem so long ago.

“My mommy’s happiest and proudest moment was when I signed my first professional contract,” Ortiz said. “I had never seen her so happy. She wanted me to be a baseball player.

“I still owe my mommy a lot. I always promised that I would take care of her as soon as I made it to the major leagues.”

He’s almost there.

Staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this story.