Charola and I played against each other for many years at Miami,
Ft. Pierce and Hartford. I'll never forget him because he was
the only player I ever got into a physical fist throwing fight
with in my career. Neither of us did any damage to the other...that
was usually the case with the many locker room fights I witnessed
through the years. It was at Miami...I'm still not sure what provoked
it, but it had something to do with the practice session before
an upcoming game. Something like...he didn't like how I threw
an outside backhand low and hard right at him...me just fooling
around...back together in the locker room just as we were lining
up to march out, Charola said in Spanish something like "I'm
gonna knock the crap out of you" and probably smirkingly
I told him in Spanish that he was crazy. He snapped and came at
me...which held up the marchout which of course made Pedro Mir
mad and he fined us both. We spoke to each other very little after
that, but even after he went to Orlando years later, he showed
up to play a tournament in Tampa where I was playing. He was the
same Charola, we said hello...but he was always considered by
the other players as being "off the wall". He had quite
a few run-ins with a variety of players.
BTW, I won a lot of points on overserves from Charola, as well
as gamepoints...because he would try to put the pelota through
me with his rocket right side. I took all of them...
