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what I was doing, I wouldn't have known what to tell you. But looking back, I can see I was just going through the motions. The next season, 1984, they sent me to Class-A Modesto, the next step up. And I got off to a pretty good start there-until a call from my sister brought that period of my life to an abrupt end.
    My mom had been sick for years, going back to a bad blood transfusion in Cuba in 1964 that infected her with hepatitis. She had to take medicine for the hepatitis, and that was bad for her diabetes. My whole life, she was sick with hepatitis and diabetes.
    A lot of times she was really weak and had to stay in bed. But in 1984 I got a call from my sister, Teresa, and I knew that this time it was different.
    "Come home," she said. "Mom is sick."
    "What's wrong?" I asked her.
    But that was all she would say. I knew it was really bad. My mother had been suffering so much, just getting weaker and weaker. She had a blood clot in her back, and it had somehow worked its way to her head. They admitted her to Miami's Cancer Research Center that weekend, but the terrible headaches she was having only got worse. I flew back to Miami to see her and went right to the hospital, but by then she was in a coma. She had never seen one of my minor-league games, and when I got there, the doctor told me she never would. "The brain is dead," the doctor told us. "That's it."
    We stayed with her in the hospital, but there was absolutely nothing we could do. Once the brain dies, that's it. Her body was being kept alive artificially with some machines, and we had to make the decision to disconnect her from life support. I went into shock and cried for hours. I just couldn't believe that my mom was dead. Out of nowhere, overnight, she was suddenly taken away from me, and I would never be able to talk to her again. She had protected me and my brother all those years, and gave us so much love and support and encouragement-but she would never see me play professional baseball. I was a wreck. I was just devastated, and all my family members knew it.
    We went through the whole process of burying my mom, remembering her, honoring her, and mourning her loss together as a family. I needed a few weeks afterward before I could even think about playing baseball again. By the time I got back on a plane to fly west and rejoin the Modesto club, I had gone through a complete transformation.
    I'd had some time alone with my mother, there in the hospital, and even though I knew she was already gone, that was my mother lying there, and I sat close to her and looked at her and had one last heart-to-heart talk with her.
    "I'm going to be the best athlete in the world, no matter what it takes," I told her, and I choked up and had to fight back tears.
    "I promise you, Mom, that I will be the best."
    The doctors can say what they want about her brain being dead, but still, I know she heard me make that promise, wherever she was, and I have always taken that promise every bit as seriously as if she had responded, "Yes, Jose, I know you will."
    So from that moment on, I dedicated my life to living up to that vow, and I didn't care what it took. No matter what the price, it didn't matter, I was going to turn myself into the best athlete in the world.
    Up until that time, I'll be the first to admit I didn't always work very hard. People thought it was because I was lazy, but actually, it was really just a question of me not seeing a future in baseball. I like to think things through, and baseball looked like it would lead to nothing but disappointment, like almost any Latino could expect to experience. But after that promise, I stopped thinking like that. I just willed myself to put everything I had into improving.
    I finished out that season with Modesto, playing decent but not great ball, with fifteen homers and an improved batting average. Then I was invited to instructional league. That was when I really got down to business. I started an extensive weight-lifting