(This story originally appeared in the April 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)
So this one was weird. It basically started by sheer luck. I was trying to plan an offseason reporting trip, looking for ways that I could get a few things done in one swing. I knew that Jacoby Ellsbury — who is believed to be the first player of Navajo descent to reach the majors — ran a camp for Native American youth in Arizona every year, and I thought it would be a good thing to cover.
As I kept doing more research, though, I kept finding amazing things that drew me in even more. By the end, I think I had enough for a book.
Ellsbury’s mother is from Parker, a town on a little reservation in western Arizona which belongs to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, collection of the Mojave, Hopi, Chemehuevi and Navajo tribes. His mother, Margie, is full-blooded Navajo, and in my research, I learned that she actually designed the CRIT flag.
Well, that was interesting. I started making random phone calls to anyone number I could find for the tribe and the town. One of the first calls I made went to voicemail. “Hi,” it said, “You’ve reached Esther McCabe.” Another McCabe (sure enough, Esther is one of Margie’s sisters). The whole thing kept going like that. It kept pulling me in.
Ellsbury is generally extremely private, not the easiest person to track down in the clubhouse, so I wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about my picking around in his past. But obviously, with his holding the camp for the kids at the same time, he was fine talking to me about the heritage, what it meant to him, and the like. His eyes lit up a bit when he heard that I was going to Parker. And he encouraged me to meet up with anyone I could from his family. I was honestly surprised that he didn’t push back at all, but I was grateful.
The last thing that happened, about two months later, when I was still writing — I ran into Ellsbury in the clubhouse in spring training. And he mentioned something to me that made me know I wasn’t making a story out of nothing, that the story I was telling was one that was deeply important to him. He told me (unprompted, out of nowhere) that when his wife gave birth to a daughter a month earlier, they had given her the middle name Parker.
The story that I tell isn’t particularly happy. The tribes have had a rough go of it, which isn’t surprising. But everyone I spoke with was so open, so warm, so interesting. Two members of the tribal council actually sat me down for a PowerPoint presentation about the whole history of the reservation. It was really incredible.
I’m so glad that I got to tell this story. I hope you’ll read it.