Once in the dugout, I have to crouch down to avoid bumping my head on the ceiling. Then I change into my familiar gear: dark blue Cubs shirt, white pants with blue stripes, dark blue baseball spikes.

I tape my wrists, as I do before every game in Wrigley and every other park in the National League. Once ready, my old friend Hector joins me. He still lives here in San Pedro, helping young people learn baseball properly. Other people who have known me since I was a boy are here, too. But they don’t call me Sammy. They call me Mikey. That’s a nickname that was given to me by my grandmother, who heard the name on a soap opera she liked and decided that from that moment on I would be Mikey. To this day, my mother calls me Mikey. My brothers and sisters call me Mikey. All my old friends call me Mikey. And everyone who comes to the park in San Pedro to watch me practice calls me Mikey, too.

It’s a nickname that’s so familiar and so closely linked to me that it’s become very personal. Everything about my visits to San Pedro is personal and special.

Once I’m dressed, I love to jog around the rough diamond at San Pedro, as I would for any practice on the classic, manicured diamond at Wrigley. I always go once around, all the way around the infield and then the outfield -- right, center, and left -- and back up the third-base line. By the time I finish my trot, a big crowd has assembled. The people stand behind a long rope down the third-base line, or they stand behind the rusted chain-link fence that acts as a backstop.

I then do calisthenics with my friends in the same way I would do them with teammates on the Cubs. Then we’ll do wind sprints in the outfield. Sometimes I do them with a number of small children running along with me. People always ask me how I was able to keep my concentration during the great home run race of 1998, when my friend Mark McGwire and I closed in on Roger Maris’s record with the media following us like an army. What I said then is what I would say if people asked how I train seriously with so many people around: I have the kind of concentration where I can shut everything off and focus on what I need to do.

Here in San Pedro, I work out hard no matter how many kids show up, no matter how many adults compete for my attention, tell me their problems, ask for help, or try to get me interested in some idea or some detail they just have to share with me. This is who I am -- I love being around people.

Soon it’s time for batting practice. Pulling out my own personalized bats, I start slowly and build momentum, lashing home runs and line drives that would go out of any major league park. By the time I get to batting practice, the golden sun of my beautiful island is at its most spectacular. One of the things I love so much about my island nation is the weather. With few exceptions, it’s almost always 85 degrees. I think if Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, lived in the Dominican, he’d say, "Let’s play two -- maybe three -- every day."

On this day, a few months before the start of the 2000 season, the balls are flying out, leaping off my bat. I feel strong at the start of a new year. And I’m looking forward to this year like no other because I feel like I’m at the top of my game.

After taking my hacks, I love to sit on a chair very near home plate and watch the local kids, eagerly dressed in baseball uniforms that dangle off their skinny frames, as they take batting practice. I smile as young pitchers and catchers throw that little bit extra into what they are doing, showing off for me. I offer words of encouragement to these kids because for a lot of my youth, encouragement was in very short supply.

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