From ‘embarrassment’ to business: Grapevine fan brings his version of baseball to life
Growing up in Puerto Rico, Miguel Otero wasn’t what you’d call a natural when it came to baseball. In neighborhood games, he’d be the last one picked … if he was picked at all. On at least one occasion, the older boys chose playing with lopsided teams over giving the skinny kid with asthma a chance.
So what do you do when you’re a baseball-obsessed 11-year-old on a baseball-obsessed island, only nobody wants to play with you?
If you’re Otero, you go home and make up your own game, one in which you can be the hero. Now, more than half a century later, he’s finally sharing his brand of baseball with the world.
In March, Otero, who lives in Grapevine, launched Homeplate USA, a fully evolved version of the board game he created in his bedroom in 1969. For comparison sake, it’s a little like Strat-O-Matic, the long-running statistics-based tabletop game, only Homeplate USA takes far less time to learn.
A scaled-down version of the real thing
The rules are pretty simple: You have a game board that looks like a baseball diamond and a bag full of game pieces. Players take turns selecting pieces from the bag — at bats, if you will — and the pieces dictate what happens.
Red pieces are outs. Just like in an actual baseball game, there are a certain percentage of fly outs, ground outs and strikeouts. Green pieces are singles, doubles, triples, walks and home runs. There are even pieces for things like sacrifice flies, stolen bases and pickoffs. Once you get three outs, it’s the other player’s turn to draw from the bag. You keep score on the game board with a dry-erase marker, and nine innings fly by in about 20 minutes.
Anything that can happen in baseball can happen in Homeplate USA, and, statistically speaking, the results are astoundingly similar to real life. Otero, who’s a pretty good mathematician, also provides players’ with optional rule variations that further increase the game’s authenticity.
Playing with Otero in his home is a surreal experience. It’s not often one competes against a game’s creator, and Otero is utterly amazed by the path his life has taken. While munching on popcorn and peanuts, just like at the old ballpark, he reminisces.
For decades, Otero played his game in secret. As a youth, he said, he felt like “a loser.” The only person he let in on his secret was another kid from the neighborhood who was equally as bad at baseball.
“Because I wasn’t being picked, I get my own little game — that was embarrassing!” said Otero.
But the itch never went away. After getting married, Otero used a rudimentary game board and game pieces to play a version of Homeplate USA, always being careful to hide it from his wife and children. For years, Otero traveled frequently for work, and he even played on flights.
“I had Ziploc bags of pieces, and on the plane while everybody was on their laptops or whatever, I was playing my little game,” Otero said.
The ‘aha’ moment
In 2015, Otero was helping his son move into a new apartment when the power went out. He figured that was as good a time as any to spill the beans, so he took the game from his pocket and asked his son if he wanted to play. Four hours later, the power was back on and the two were still playing. That’s when Otero realized he had something others might appreciate.
“That’s why this day is so important,” Otero said of publicizing Homeplate USA. “It’s not about the business, it’s not about the exposure. Honestly, it’s something that I have held close to my heart secretly for so long. I never expected to be sitting down in front of somebody that is going to show that secret to the world.”
Today, half of Otero’s living room has been converted into a warehouse where he packs and preps his games for shipping as orders come in through his website, homeplateusa.com. The other half is filled with baseball memorabilia, including a shrine to Otero’s boyhood idol, hall of famer and fellow Puerto Rican Roberto Clemente. Next to his fridge is a piece of paper on which Otero posts standings, the win-loss records of friends and neighbors who stop by his place to play Homeplate USA.
Otero, who eventually got good enough to play college baseball, still has a love for the game that’s as pure as it was when he was young. He also has a heart for kids, especially those with disabilities. Otero gives away copies of Homeplate USA to youngsters who might not otherwise be able to play baseball in the hopes of providing a way for them to connect with the sport the way he did. He’s also donated games and auction items to fundraisers supporting the Miracle League, an organization devoted to making baseball more accessible for children with disabilities.
A dream realized
Now retired from the restaurant business, Otero has been marketing and selling Homeplate USA with help from his daughters. Will it ever be as big as Strat-O-Matic or popular enough to get kids to put down their electronic devices? Who cares? Otero isn’t worried about striking it rich. He’s content selling as many copies of his game as people want to buy and using his newfound platform, however modest it is, to share his love of baseball.
Sitting at a table in his living room with his game spread out in front of him, Roberto Clemente gazing down from a painting over his head, Otero looks every bit the man who has achieved self actualization.
There’s a hypothetical question that grown-ups sometimes get asked: What would you say to your younger self?
Maybe the better question is this: What would your younger self say to the grown-up you? There’s a good chance the 11-year-old Miguel Otero would be at a loss for words. But there’s an equally good chance he’d have but one thing to say.
“Wow!”