SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Carmalita Brown-Sabol didn’t take any chances with the supermarkets in Scottsdale.
She was visiting her son and had the dinner menu all planned out: sapasuey and fa’alifu talo, palusami and mamoe, curries and steamed mackerel and enough boiled taro to feed an entire spring camp of major-league players.
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“She flew over with all the ingredients,” Giants catcher Blake Sabol said. “She pretty much brought the whole store with her. It must’ve been noon when she started cooking. There were 10 of us. Even with Samoan-sized portions, there was no way we could eat it all. I took some home and got two more dinners out of it. So did Sean.”
That would be Giants left-hander Sean Manaea, and if there’s anything better than reconnecting with a taste from home, it’s sharing that experience with someone else. Sabol joined the Giants this offseason via the Rule 5 draft and a trade with the Cincinnati Reds. Manaea, the former A’s and Padres starter, is another new arrival after he signed a two-year, $25 million contract. Neither of them had ever met another pro baseball player who shared their Samoan heritage. Now they talk brightly about the prospect of forming the first Samoan battery in major-league history.
“It’s amazing,” Manaea said. “Every team I was on, I’d watch the Dominican or Puerto Rican players. The bond they share is awesome. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a Samoan teammate. So this has been a lot of fun.”
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Their shared heritage is also a study in contrasts. Sabol’s mother was born in Western Samoa, a former German territory that gained independence from New Zealand in 1962 and shortened its official name to Samoa in 1997. Manaea’s father, Faaloloi, was born in the eastern islands of American Samoa, which has been a U.S. territory since 1900.
Sabol’s mother moved to California when she was a teenager and Blake grew up in Orange County, surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins. Second-cousins, too, including former Pittsburgh Steelers all-pro safety Troy Polamalu. His mother is descended from the Fonoti-Brown family, which traces its lineage to kings and queens and remains one of the country’s more prominent landholding clans. With the country’s system of customary land tenure, some of that land will be Sabol’s to claim.
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“From what they tell me, we just have to buy a plane ticket, go over there and there’s some paperwork to do,” Sabol said.
Manaea did not grow up with cousins and second cousins. His father left American Samoa when he enlisted in the military. He fought in Vietnam and then was stationed in Indiana, where he met his wife, Opal. Sean and his brother, Dane, grew up in Wanatah, a 1,000-person town with more grain silos than stoplights. In the monoculture of the Midwest, he felt estranged from his heritage.
“Not too many Polynesians in Indiana,” Manaea said. “I never really experienced the culture. But I always wanted to get to know that part of me. I’ve been fascinated by it since I was a kid.”
When Manaea received a $3.55 million signing bonus from the Royals as a supplemental first-round pick out of Indiana State in 2013, the first thing he did with the money was to book a trip to American Samoa with his parents. It involved a five-hour flight to Honolulu and then another 7-hour flight across an even larger expanse of the Pacific Ocean. He met cousins for the first time and stayed in the house in Lauli’i where his father grew up. He got his first taste of traditional Samoan food. Dane would have joined them, too. But he’d just enlisted in the Navy.
Military service is a strong tradition in American Samoa, which has the highest enlistment rate among all U.S. states and territories. The U.S. Army recruiting station at Pago Pago routinely ranks No. 1 among more than 800 Army recruiting stations and centers worldwide.
A major reason for the high enlistment rate is a lack of economic opportunity. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, 50.7 percent of the territory’s 49,710 residents live below the poverty level — by far the highest poverty rate among U.S. states and territories, and more than double the highest total for any state (Mississippi, at 19.5 percent).
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Another reason is that military service can provide a path to naturalization. American Samoa is the only U.S. territory that does not grant birthright citizenship. Residents are considered nationals, not citizens, and can hold U.S. passports but cannot vote or run for elected office. (Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a petition that sought to establish birthright citizenship in American Samoa by overturning “Insular Cases” from the early 1900s — legal precedent that even U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch has said was based on “ugly racist stereotypes.” The Court declined the petition without comment.)
So despite the fact American Samoa supplies the most military service members per capita, and suffered the highest per capita fatality rate in the Iraq conflict, its people continue to be denied the full rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship.
In spite of that, there is a third powerful reason: military service is often viewed as a family tradition and a point of pride. Manaea had tears in his eyes in April of last season when he took the field for a start in San Diego on Military Appreciation Night and Dane, a hospital corpsman third class who has been stationed as far away as Spain and Japan, was on the mound in his whites to wrap him in a hug and hand him the baseball.
“My mom, I just texted her, and she was crying,” Manaea told MLB.com at the time. “It’s a beautiful moment.”
On Military Sunday Sean Manaea’s brother Dane (Navy medical corpsman) is waiting on mound to greet him. Thank you for your service Dane! Go Sean and GO PADS!!! pic.twitter.com/T3XgDjsBft
— Bob Scanlan (@heyscan) April 24, 2022
Someday, Manaea and Sabol would love to represent Samoa in the World Baseball Classic. Perhaps momentum is building. In January 2019, the American Samoa National Team upset 7th-ranked Australia and took second place at the Oceania U-18 Baseball Championship in Guam. There’s been talk of assembling with other Polynesian nations under an Oceania banner and attempting to qualify for the next scheduled WBC tournament in 2027.
For now, sharing a major-league spring clubhouse with Manaea is enough of a thrill for Sabol.
“Sean Manaea was the only guy in the big leagues with Samoan heritage, so I always rooted for him,” said Sabol, who was a seventh-round pick of the Pirates in 2019 out of USC. “I know how important that is. A lot of Polynesian kids only see football players or rugby players. If there’s more of us on TV playing baseball, maybe they’ll think, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ I’m happy to be able to represent it. It’d be even better if we can represent it together. If we can get to the regular season and I get back there for him, if we make some big-league history, I’ll be excited for it.”
Manaea, 31, is assured a prime place on the Giants’ pitching staff. Sabol, 25, has no such guarantee.
The Giants traded for Sabol because they liked his mix of power and patience at the plate along with the athleticism to become a flexible roster piece. He’s not brand new to catching — he played the position exclusively as a freshman at USC before gravitating to the outfield, then caught 58 games at Double-A Altoona last year — but he has a lot to absorb and apply before he could be deemed ready to catch a major-league staff.
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He got a jump on the spring by connecting with several Giants pitchers over the phone in the weeks before camp began. He also received a 45-minute download from none other than Buster Posey. Giants manager Gabe Kapler noted that Sabol’s setup looked stiff in the first days of mound sessions but has improved over the past three weeks. Sabol had a rough day behind the plate Friday afternoon, however, when he got called for catcher’s interference and didn’t have the crispest footwork on a couple of throws to bases.
The Giants continue to insist that their catching competition is wide open between Sabol, Joey Bart, Austin Wynns and two-time Gold Glove winner Roberto Pérez. But it’s difficult to imagine Sabol breaking with the team if the Giants only carry two catchers. Perhaps the off days built into the first week of the season will give the Giants a bit of roster flexibility to carry an extra position player. But as a Rule 5 pick, Sabol must be kept on the major-league roster all season or be offered back to the Pirates for $50,000.
Sabol is trying to make the best impression he can.
“Just a kid living the dream,” he said.
With a side of coconut cream. Manaea said he hadn’t had Samoan food since his trip there in 2014. So he thoroughly enjoyed last week’s culinary excursion, leftovers included.
Sapasuey, by the way, is a stir-fried noodle dish with canned corned beef — a Samoan pantry staple. Mamoe is lamb ribs. Palusami is wrapped taro leaves with an onion and coconut filling. And fa’alifu talo is twice-boiled taro in coconut cream.
“It was fantastic,” Manaea said. “She’s a really good cook.”
Clubhouse confidential
Outfielder Mitch Haniger was scratched from Friday’s exhibition against the Rockies at Salt River Fields because of oblique tightness, Kapler said. Haniger is expected to miss “a few days.” … Right-hander Cole Waites (right lat strain) threw his second session off a bullpen mound and said he’s optimistic he will be back to full speed within a week. … Outfielder Vaun Brown has been held out of action due to left knee patellar tendinitis. He described the discomfort as a compensation injury stemming from offseason surgery to clean out scar tissue in his right knee. Brown, who hit a home run in his brief Cactus League action, was among a handful of Giants non-roster invitees who were reassigned to minor-league camp on Friday. He’s still expected to begin his minor-league season on time. … The Giants also optioned outfielder and 2017 first-round pick Heliot Ramos, who was never a candidate to make the club. Ramos appeared in just nine big-league games last year and his performance at Triple-A Sacramento (.654 OPS) didn’t warrant a longer trial. “Heliot still has some work to do,” Kapler said. “We need to see him perform at the minor-league level to earn another opportunity at the major-league level.”
(Top photo of Manaea: Morry Gash / Associated Press)