SEATTLE – Jolbert Cabrera comes to the ballpark every day not knowing what position he will play, or even if he will play. But he keeps on smiling.
When he’s stuck in a hitting rut that seems to be epidemic on his team, he still feels good.
When the obligations of family collide with baseball and a daughter’s dance lesson runs perilously close to the beginning of batting practice, as it did one day last week, he feels joy and not chaos.
Jolbert Cabrera loves this life, even on a last-place team, because he knows how close he came to losing it 2 years ago.
Cabrera, the Seattle Mariners’ versatile infielder/outfielder, was the victim of an attempted robbery and shooting in his hometown of Cartagena, Colombia, on Dec. 21, 2001. He wears the scar of a bullet near his right hip and the never-fading memory of the day when his wife, his two daughters and himself had something – a nice truck – that some thieves apparently wanted.
Delbys Cabrera was driving the vehicle as Jolbert sat in the back seat with his daughters, Alexandra and Ashlyn, who were 7 and 3 at the time. Because the windows were tinted, the bandits saw only Mrs. Cabrera and decided she would be an easy target, Jolbert believes.
“They made my wife come out of the car on the other side, and when I came out the same way, they saw me and started running,” he said.
One of the thieves turned and fired a gun.
“I heard the shot but I never saw him,” Cabrera said. “All I could think of was getting my girls out of the car because the first thing on my mind is that those guys wanted the car. My leg went numb. That’s when I realized I had been shot.”
Cabrera, 31, has recovered physically, and his children seem to be doing well.
“My youngest doesn’t really remember it, but my oldest (now 9) is pretty shy because she still remembers,” he said.
The bullet was removed on Christmas Day, 2001, and Cabrera was playing for the Cleveland Indians by May the next season. When teammates see that scar and ask what happened, Cabrera usually jokes about it.
“I tell people that I was shot in the butt, you want to see? People don’t realize how serious it was because of the way I joke about it,” he said. “But I was very fortunate. I had my whole family together that night, and we are lucky nobody got hurt.”
Cabrera said the shooting changed his perspective on life, and that the ups and downs of baseball are no reason to make him forget what’s truly important.
“You can see that in the way I play. I’m always smiling,” he said. “I enjoy every day. I enjoy life and I enjoy my family because you don’t know when it’s time to go.
“My love for this game grew so much more than before. I started playing when I was 4 years old, and I feel the same way about the game now as I did when I started playing. I don’t think that’s going to go away.
“I am very blessed.”
Cabrera has been blessed by baseball almost from the day he was born. His father, the late Jolbert Cabrera Sr., played, scouted and coached Colombia’s national team, and he raised his boys with the right way to play the game.
Jolbert’s brother, Orlando, is the shortstop for the Montreal Expos, a source of tremendous family pride. When Jolbert reached the major leagues in 1998, he became just the sixth from Colombia to make it.
“It is magnified even more because me and my brother are playing in the big leagues together,” he said. “That’s very hard to accomplish, especially coming out of a country like Colombia, where soccer is the big sport and baseball doesn’t get the support. It means a lot that people recognize where we are from.”
In a life that seems steered by fate, it makes sense that Cabrera’s career would bring him to Seattle.
He was a Mariners fan as a teen-ager, having been given a glove by shortstop Omar Vizquel when his father spent some time working with the Mariners at spring training in 1989.
Cabrera got his first major league hit against the Mariners, on May 5, 1999, off Jeff Fassero.
And he played a big role in one of the most memorable games in Mariners history, getting the winning hit to finish the Cleveland Indians’ record 12-run comeback to beat the M’s on Aug. 5, 2001.
The bat Cabrera used to get that hit is in the Hall of Fame. “Well, pieces of it are in the Hall of Fame,” said Cabrera, who shattered that bat.
He spent parts of three seasons with the Indians, including most of 2001 when he came back from the gunshot wound and played 141 games.
The Indians traded him in 2002 to Los Angeles, where current Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi was the Dodgers’ player development director and saw Cabrera’s strength as a hitter and versatile defender.
Cabrera played seven different positions for the Dodgers last year – all but pitcher and catcher – and batted .282 with 32 doubles among his 98 hits.
The Mariners, needing that kind of versatile veteran, made a trade with the Dodgers just before the season began.
“He’s an aggressive offensive guy,” Bavasi said. “He has enough versatility that we can keep his bat in the lineup.”
On a team that has belly-flopped offensively, Cabrera’s playing time has increased as the Mariners seek solutions to their slump.
“When I first got here, nobody knew me,” Cabrera said. “The coaching staff hadn’t seen me play before. But Bill Bavasi knew what kind of player I was. My first couple games I had a tough time because I kind of lost my timing. But Bob (Melvin) stuck with me and he has given me a chance and I thank him for that. He has allowed me to prove what I’m about.”
Cabrera is hitting .299 going into today’s game at Cleveland and has started at six different positions (all but pitcher, catcher and right field).
Offensively, he has given the Mariners what they sought.
“You can consider me a threat because wherever you put me, I’m going to produce for the guy I’m replacing that day,” Cabrera said.
He is thankful to many of the teammates who showed him how to play various positions. Vizquel, his hero as a teen-ager, became a close friend and a mentor in Cleveland. In Seattle he works alongside Bret Boone at second base, John Olerud at first and Ichiro Suzuki in the outfield.
“I’ve been very fortunate that throughout my career I’ve been around Gold Glovers at every position,” Cabrera said.
With a smile, of course.
Even on a last-place team, he knows he is fortunate to be playing at this level and lucky to be alive.
“I’ve always been blessed,” he said. “And I really, really love this game.”
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