On basketballin' with the tigueres

Dominicans love sports - and no, not only baseball. They also love dominos (definitely can be a contact sport), dancing (very intense cardio) and basketball (of which I know very little). I've seen Dominicans bro out and bond on the court and it looks like an interesting breeding ground for anthropological research, and one I've always thought about exploring in this blog. So many tigueres (Dominican bros) in one place, how could there not be a good story or insight into Dominican culture there. I've always found it fascinating how much camaraderie seems to come out of those afternoon pick up games, but basketball is to young athletic Dominicans as gossiping is to porch sitting doñas and I know my place, it's with the doñas. So instead of investigating the information myself, I went to an insider, Joshua (a medical student interning in Manzanillo this summer) and asked him to write a blog. Here's what he came up with!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

"My second day in the Dominican Republic was exhausting. Lauren and I (medical students spending the summer working with Bea in Manzanillo) spent most of the day meeting new people, inviting them into our house for Coca Cola and cookies, and trying to figure out how to take a shower in a three-room house full of strangers. By 6pm, I needed a break.

When I told my new Dominican friend/co-worker Victor that I wanted to walk around town, he suggested that we go to the “Cancha.” Not having a clue what a cancha was, I agreed nonetheless, and enjoyed a short walk from our house to what was clearly a brightly painted basketball court. Delightful.

To the readers of Bea’s blog: there are a few things you may not know about me (pretty much anything not written above). For example, I had pet newts as a child, who I named, but could never figure out which one was which. They could have been twins. Another detail of my life you may not be informed of is that I love basketball. Playing, watching, wondering what the game would be like if the players were allowed to put Super Glue on the ball.

I was thrilled to have discovered basketball in Manzanillo. Victor and I sat in the concrete bleachers along with about 50 casual fans. At first, the game seemed nearly identical to American basketball. The players had nicknames I could understand like “El Kobe,” “Jay-Z,” and “Peepee,” the last of which reminded me of gym class. The game was fast-paced, aerial, and fun to watch. Then I started to notice some differences.

American pickup basketball is less formal than a typical high school or college game. Players call their own fouls, but are more lax with some of the finer points of the game, such as carrying, travels, backcourt violations and charges. Unspoken rules of the game. In Manzanillo, this is most certainly not the case. The players call everything, including some questionable fouls.

The big difference however, is the reaction to a questionable foul call. In the United States, reactions are relatively muted and occasionally followed by passive-aggressive sniping. Typical interaction:

“Foul!”

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“Dude, when you hit someone on the way up, it's a foul.”

“Whatever. Take it. If that’s actually the way you want to call it…”

Often, the goal is to make the other person feel bad about themselves as a human, or more specifically, as a man. It is a complicated dance, fraught with read-between-the-lines moments. It keeps conflict subterranean, and the game moving.

Manzanillo basketball departs strikingly from this American tradition. The foul call is less of a verdict and more of an opening statement given to an unlicensed judge on daytime TV. Naturally, both of the players involved in the incident argue vehemently for their point of view. The remaining members of the team are quickly involved, siding with their player. Finally the bystanders are sucked into the vortex, some eagerly offering their opinions and others try to look casual like uncomfortable 13-year-olds trying to blend into the wall at a bar mitzvah. The arguments are loud and impassioned. The interesting part (to me) is how they conclude.

After the respective sides have shouted themselves tired, someone theoretically has to capitulate. Not being fluent in the language, I still—more than a month after that first game—don’t know exactly how this happens. But it usually does. Someone turns away their head, sucks in their teeth, and throws their hands up in the air, a gesture that indicates something along the lines of, “I will be buried and eaten by worms one day, but my spirit will still know I was right.” However, on occasion, both sides will entrench themselves so firmly in their opinion of whether or not someone stepped on the out-of-bounds-line, that they cannot recover. They have transgressed physically (depending on whom you side with) and proverbially the line of no return.

In these cases, the standstill is never broken like North and South-going Zax a la Dr. Suess, they remain at their impasse for eternity. The two players involved sit down in the bleachers, silently fuming, and the game ends. Hung jury. The festivities are over for the day, and lesser, spinoff, half-court games continue as the afternoon peters out.

Back to Day 2 in Manzanillo. I was doing my best to make myself transparent, when an argument broke out among the audience. It seemed tangentially related to the game, but the players continued without taking note. Much like the arguments I would later witness about foul calls, this one became heated quickly. People took sides, recruited allies, and staked their reputation on something I was having trouble deciphering. My disguise as a piece of bleacher failed spectacularly, when I was subpoenaed as an expert witness. Rubio! they yelled in my direction. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew that I had to respond. The spectators quieted. After a dense silence, someone stepped up to me, and asked loudly and painstakingly, as if talking to their deaf father-in-law: “Lebron Chames, o Michal Chordan?”

Jordan. Hands down.

Perhaps the argument is just another Dominican sport."