BANI, Dominican Republic -- It's just minutes before the scheduled start of a crucial Dominican winter league baseball game and no one can find Erick Aybar.
He's not in Licey's painfully cramped, humid clubhouse suffering with his teammates. He's not in the Tigers' dugout. And because the field is slowly being washed away by a tropical storm, he's not there either.
Eventually a guard finds him in one of the stadium's air-conditioned luxury suites, watching cable TV and making cellphone calls with some friends, all of which illustrates three things about Licey's starting shortstop: He's smart enough to stay out of the rain and humid clubhouses, he doesn't get nervous before big games and he knows how to improvise.
And while those probably weren't the exact traits the Angels zeroed in on when they discussed Aybar's future during the off-season, they obviously liked what they did see. Because when the team opens spring training this week in Tempe, Ariz., they'll do so with the 24-year-old Dominican, who started only six games at shortstop last season, leading the fight to replace Gold Glove winner Orlando Cabrera at one of baseball's most demanding positions.
"We're very excited about Erick's potential," Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said. "He has the package to be a very dynamic presence at shortstop."
And Aybar insists he's up to the challenge.
"I've been working for this," he said, sitting between two friends on a sofa in his family's home in Bani, a provincial capital about an hour's drive west of Santo Domingo. "I'm ready. I'm 100% ready."
For decades Bani was known locally as "the city of poets" but it may be time to rethink that name because the southwest part of the Dominican Republic, with Bani at its center, has become the country's new cradle of baseball. The town of 61,000 has sent 18 sons to the big leagues, among them former American League most valuable player Miguel Tejada, three-time National League All-Star Mario Soto and World Series champions Juan Uribe and Timo Perez.
Another former MVP, Angels teammate Vladimir Guerrero, was born in nearby Nizao. And more than 100 Banians have played minor league baseball since 1996.
Aybar isn't the first baseball player in the family; his father, Narciso, was playing second base for amateur teams in the Bani area some 30 years ago.
