Jesus Alou, Youngest in Trio of Baseball-Playing Brothers, Dies at 80

Jesus Maria Rojas Alou was born on March 24, 1942, in Bajos de Haina, Dominican Republic. near Santo Domingo, the nation’s capital. He was one of six children in a poor family. His father, Jose Rojas, a carpenter and fisherman, was the grandson of a slave. His mother, Virginia Alou, was of Spanish descent.

Felipe’s son Moises also played major league baseball and another son, Jose Rojas, briefly managed the Mets.

Jesus married Angela Hanley in the late 1960s and they had five children: Angela, Jesus Jr., Maria de Jesus, Claudia and Jeimy. Jesus Jr. became the director of the Boston Red Sox’s player development complex in the Dominican Republic in 2002.

A list of Jesus’ survivors was not immediately available. Matty Alou died in 2011.

“It’s not so strange that we all played ball — families in the Dominican Republic get to be good in one thing,” Jesus Alou told The Times in 1975. “Singers, doctors, even politicians — they can run in the family. Maybe it’s because little brothers look up to the big brothers, the way we looked up to Felipe. Sometimes I wonder if maybe big brothers in the United States shouldn’t realize that — that responsibility. They should set the example.”

“When you were a kid in the Dominican Republic, the Americano was a real big strong guy,” he said in the same interview. “You saw him on the street and you asked him for a quarter. Then you come up to the big leagues and you see that he has weaknesses, too. Now Felipe and I are next‐door neighbors back home, and Matty and my mother and father all live a couple of blocks away. I guess we look much richer to the people there than we really are. Maybe we’re the Americanos now.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/sports/baseball/jesus-alou-dead.html