TORONTO — The brown sugar bubbled in the pan. The marinated goat meat sizzled when added. Spoonfuls of olives and capers were heaped into the mixture. Then Altagracia Alvino, who can make this dish with her eyes closed, froze.
“Did I put spice in here?” she whispered to herself in Spanish.
Alvino, 66, was careful to make as little noise as possible because it was 7:22 a.m., and her husband and her 20-year-old grandson, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., one of baseball’s brightest young stars, were asleep in their rooms of the family’s Toronto apartment. The familiar scent of cooking meat was unavoidable, though.
Silver hair in a net, Alvino leaned in to inspect the meat, decided it indeed lacked kick and reached for a package of crushed red pepper. She had plenty of time to perfect the feast of white rice, stewed beans and goat before Guerrero awakened at 11 a.m. and quickly departed for Rogers Centre, carrying bags of the food to share with both his Blue Jays teammates and their opponents.
Alvino may be the most popular and powerful grandmother in baseball. For about two decades, she has filled the bellies of hundreds of players, most of them Latin Americans far from home. Eating her comfort food is a tradition that has become especially popular among players from the family’s homeland, the Dominican Republic.
A few have come to call Alvino “abuela,” or Grandma, yet most have never met her. She was there for every step in the career of her son Vladimir Guerrero Sr., who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame last year, and now she oversees his son’s.
“I do it out of love,” Alvino said recently as she drank coffee at the dining room table while the food cooked.