"Sugar" in the Bronx

Scene from Sugar (2008)

By Kinvelyn Guaba

The Bronx Journal Staff Writer

He was a baseball player who was cast for a movie right from playing in the baseball field in the Dominican Republic. After the success of his first movie “Sugar,” Algenis Perez Soto, the star of the movie “Sugar” will be working on his second movie in the summer.

It will be filmed in the Caribbean and, this time, it will be an action movie. Soto says he is delighted to be working on another baseball movie.

He recently visited The Bronx Museum of Art for a showcase of his first movie “Sugar.” Soto, who played the role of Miguel Santos, nicknamed “Sugar,” represents all those inspired young baseball players who never made it to the major league. “What you see in the movie happens in real life,” Soto said.

The movie is about a baseball player in the Dominican Republic who was recruited to play for the United States’ minor league baseball team. After hard work and struggle, “Sugar” decide to quit baseball. He traveled to New York City, where he ended up making a living by working at a diner and playing baseball on the weekends. “It was my first time working in a movie and the first day of the shooting, I was playing baseball,” he added.

Soto explains how the movie relates to many young men who grew up in the Dominican Republic. Baseball is the most popular sport there.

Soto says that many Dominican fathers introduce the sport to their sons by giving them a bat and throwing a ball at them so they can learn to swing. Many boys grow up playing baseball. “It is every little boy’s dream in the Dominican Republic to play baseball,” says Soto. He adds, “When you grow up in the Dominican Republic, all you want to do is play baseball.”

Soto was an influenced by professional baseball players and aspired to be one. “We used to play in the streets with brooms and mops as a bat. All my friends from school and the neighborhood, we all had the dream to be like Pedro Martinez.” (A Dominican baseball player who plays for the Boston Red Sox.)

Many young Dominicans share his dream. Romauris Guaba, a 17-year-old from Harlem, has played baseball since he was nine years old in the field of Rucker Park and has participated many leagues. Guaba went to the Dominican Republic in 2010 to train and hoping to be recruited to the minor league. However, he was disappointed and discouraged by the the recruiters.

Soto was cast while he was playing in a field of San Pedro de Macoris, nearby where the casting tryouts were taking place. “I was so lucky,” said Soto. “I always wanted to be a professional baseball player, I never thought I would be a baseball player in a movie.”

Learning English was not as hard for Soto. He learned the script and his English progressed during and after the movie. Soto said it was a challenge for him to play the role of a pitcher because he played short stop and second base back in the Dominican Republic.

Soto tried out for “Money Ball,” which another baseball film about a Major League Baseball manager which starred Brad Pitt. He didn’t get the job, but he says he will continue to wait for opportunities to play a role in baseball movies.