So I'm taking a lot of commenters advice and making a blog. I'm planning on moving my original forum post over to the blog and writing a few more entries as I've been to a bunch more games and it's playoff time here. But first, I figured I'd post this as it's relevant this week and it was such a cool thing to run into.

So my parents came down to visit a week and a half ago. We spent a week where I'm living in Santiago and a weekend on the beach. We went to a ball game and have done a bunch of different touristy things. This weekend, we're hanging out in the capital, Santo Dominigo before they have to go home and I have to head back to work. Today we were walking around the Colonial Zone and seeing the classic sites: Columbus' house, the oldest road, church and settlement in the Americas, and some other stuff.

On our way back to our AirBnb, we ran into a bunch of boys dressed up in their baseball uniforms standing on a corner. They all had hand fans and posters congratulating Vladimir Guerrero on being the third Dominican born player to get into the hall of fame. I asked one of the boys why they were standing there and he said there was going to be a parade soon. Luckily, my parents are baseball fans and are always down for spontaneous activities, so we decided to hang around and see what a Dominican Hall of Fame parade was all about.

We stood on the corner with the boys for a ten or so minuets, but there was no sign of a parade of Vlad. I asked one of the boys when the parade was coming by. His reply of "ahora" represents one of the many quarks of Dominican culture. Ahora translates literally to "now" but after living in the Dominican Republic for three months, I've found that they use it much more liberally. In other Spanish speaking countries I've been to, ahora can be taken literally, and people use other words for soon, such as "pronto" and "un minuto". In the Dominican Republic, ahora can mean any amount of time from right now to weeks from now. It's especially scary when they add the ending -ita, as that literally indicates a short moment (ahorita). Here, that -ita usually means your now is even more extended.

Anyways, that is all to say that I was worried we'd end up waiting on the street corner with these boys till late into the night for Vlad to show up, if he was going to at all. Once again, I found myself lucky that I have such an amazing family. We spotted a corner store (colmado), with the tell tale Presidente beer sign in front and decided to sit and have a cold one. Colmados are the best place to buy beer because it comes from a refrigerator/freezer hybrid. This is necessary because the beer here is nothing like the wonderfully bitter craft choices from home and much more like the Keystone Light you'd find in my frat basement. It's much better to freeze your mouth while drinking it than actually taste the beer itself. The other advantage of buying beer at a colmado is that they have plastic chairs they'll let you bring outside and sit on while you enjoy your beverage. While the DR doesn't have a lot of bars as we know them in the US, almost every block has the local colmado and it's common to see people sitting out till late, every night of the week.

So, after buying a Jumbo Presidente and borrowing some chairs, we had a front row seat to a parade. As we waited, more and more people from the neighborhood came down to the street, so we felt better that there would actually be something to see. After about an hour, we saw the first lights on top of a police truck and heard music from down the street. As the parade got closer, we got an idea of just what a Dominican parade actually is. First came motorcycles, both police and civilian followed by and surrounding a half dozen police vehicles. Following those was a rag tag mix of nice cars, trucks, SUVs and any other kind of transportation you can think of. The third truck in line was the man of the hour, Vladimir Guerrero, sitting in the back of a huge pickup truck. Vlad looked like he was having a blast, smiling and waving to everyone.

I figured that the parade would end soon after Vlad's car went by. Boy, was I wrong. Following him was a mix of vehicles in a huge line that took another 15 minutes to pass. Some of the highlights of this rag tag group: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., in a similar truck to his father's, with three friends wearing custom Blue Jays jerseys, multiple flat bed trucks hauling only huge stacks of speaks blasting merengue, bachata, and reggaetone and a mix of both some of the nicest cars I've seen here in the Dominican and some of the most beat up. What it takes to get your car into a parade like this, I don't know. It's possible you just have to turn onto the right street at the right time.

One thing's for sure, everyone involved was having a great time. Almost every vehicle in the parade had someone hanging out of a sunroof or on top of the car itself. Most everyone also had a bottle of Presidente or a cup of rum in their hand as well.

After leaving the parade, we decided to walk about a mile to a restaurant on the ocean for my parent's last night here before going back to the winter in MN. On the way, we ended up walking by the park where parade ended. Apparently, the parade was just the beginning of the party, because there was a stage with a huge crowd. On the stage was a band playing bachata, and off to the side was a VIP tent with Vlad and his family and friends. Flanking the stage were huge posters with Vlad in an Angles jersey that said "Vladimir Guerrero Juagador Immortal".

I think that phrase, that translates to "Vladimir Guerrero, Immortal Player" captures the spirit of the day perfectly. In this country that is obsessed with baseball, they are overjoyed to see one of their own recognized in the Hall of Fame. I think I saw it on Vlad's face too when he passed by. In a country with so much pride, Vladimir Guerrero is the third of what will surely be many more to be recognized as an "Immortal" in the game they love so much.