Who are you now?
I don’t know about now, but a long time ago I was just a kid collecting cards, a kid collecting joy. I was eight when this one came to me. The name wouldn’t have meant anything to me, but I might have paused for a moment and looked into his eyes. I think it would have made me want to go get a bat. I don’t know who I am now, but when I was a kid I wanted to get in the game. I wanted to go forward. I wanted to play. With anyone, everyone.
Who are you now?
Hector Torres is the son of Epitacio “La Mala” Torres, a legendary Mexican rightfielder who Whitey Ford once called the best he’d ever seen. The elder Torres, whose nickname means “The Bad,” seems to have been the Ichiro of his time and place, a relatively quiet man who didn’t hit for much power but hit for high average and had a cannon arm. Hector’s own skills showed themselves early, and he used them as a dominant 12-year-old pitcher to lead his Monterrey team to the Little League World Series championship in 1958. He wasn’t a pitcher in the majors, though he did once log two-thirds of an inning for the Montreal Expos in a rout. La Malita (“The Little Bad”) got shelled in the return to the elevated locus of his childhood. Whatever you were as a kid is gone.
Who are you now?
Who are you now that we’re talking about Nazis and internment camps and walls of all kinds, figurative and literal, all amounting to the same thing: the bad is the other, not us, and needs to be on the other side of the wall?
Who are you now?
Everywhere you look there’s darkness. Take the name of the team shown at the bottom of this card, the Padres, a reference to the religious missionaries who came into California to spread Christianity. Indians who had thrived without it for thousands of years were forced into missions, where they were whipped and beaten if they didn’t behave according to the dictates of the missionaries who believed that they were doing holy work. If you believe differently, who are you now?
Who are you now?
I don’t know if Hector Torres is religious, but he once nearly killed Jesus. Jesus Alou, that is. From the June 6, 1969 issue of Sports Illustrated:
A frightening collision between Jesus Alou and Hector Torres of Houston . . . could have resulted in tragedy had it not been for fast work by Pittsburgh trainer Tony Bartirome and his Houston counterpart, Jim Ewell. They may well have saved Alou’s life, prying his tongue from the back of his throat and inserting a rubber hose that permitted Alou to breathe normally again. Torres received only minor cuts, but Alou got a severe concussion and a broken jaw.
Who are you now?
You might think that Hector Torres’s collision with Jesus was neither holy nor unholy, but maybe the essence of holiness is a connection between people, some communication either said or unsaid that allows for peaceful interdependence, and maybe the essence of unholiness is the lack of this connection, which leads instead to jarring, injurious collision. We’re coming together whether we like it or not. There are no lasting borders here on earth, and probably not anywhere else either. Heaven and hell are just words. The choice is connection or collision.
Who are you now?
Hector Torres made borders dissolve. He was the first Mexican player to play in both the Little League World Series and the major leagues. He was also the first man to play for both Canadian teams, beating Toronto Blue Jay teammate and fellow former Expo Ron Fairly to the honor by two days. I didn’t know any of that when I looked at his card in 1976, but I may have wondered about another border, the one between here and gone. On the back of the card, below the heading “Complete Major League Batting Record,” there are statistical entries for every year between 1968 and 1973 and then one last entry for 1975. Nothing for 1974. Where did he disappear to that year? Could he disappear again? My understanding of baseball statistics surely indicated that for Torres, a lifetime .214 hitter at the time of this card, this was a distinct possibility.
Who are you now?
Or where are you now? Do you have one foot out the door? Are you planning to follow Hector Torres’s twice-trod path to Canada? Are you planning to follow Hector Torres’s path into mysterious invisibility? I’ve entertained both thoughts, though the latter has gotten much more serious consideration. Just try to imagine we’re not all bound for strangulating collisions of every kind. Just watch old TV shows and look at old baseball cards and try to disappear into what you once were, a simple collector of joy.
Who are you now?
I’m a father, fearful for my boys and the world, and I’m giving the front of this card another look now, same as I would have done when I was eight. That look in Hector Torres’s eyes. La Malita has been gone, but he’s battled his way back. He’s here. He’s no superstar. He’s choking up on the bat. He’s going to try to connect.
Cardboard Gods 
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