G. Allen Johnson. San
Francisco Chronicle. Wednesday, June 20, 2001
What if Graham Greene had written a baseball book, complete with exotic
Caribbean settings, gunplay, a Communist-controlled thought police, smuggling
and derring-do?
It'd be a lot like "The Duke of Havana" (Villard Books, $24.95),
which is so much more than the true story of Orlando "El Duque"
Hernandez's journey from Cuban baseball defector to New York Yankees World
Series hero.
This excellent piece of investigative journalism climaxes with good old-
fashioned storytelling -- a fast-paced and exciting account of Hernandez's
escape at the bottom of a boat in the dead of night, followed by days on a
deserted island -- but also serves as an informal socio-economic and political
look into Fidel Castro's regime. If you have any interest in Cuba, its citizens
or politics, then you don't have to love baseball to enjoy this book.
Steve Fainaru and Ray Sanchez are our men in Havana. Sanchez was a Latin
America correspondent for Newsday. Fainaru, an investigative sportswriter for
the Washington Post, did most of his legwork while with the Boston Globe. (He is
the brother of The Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada.)
By now, Cuban baseball players defecting is commonplace. Just last month,
left-handed Cuban national team pitcher Rolando Viera hopped aboard a plane out
of Cuba. That's almost 10 years after Castro's first baseball Benedict Arnold,
Rene Arocha, defected in Miami, on July 4, 1991.
But that wasn't always the case. Opportunistic agent Joe Cubas was once a
poor man with a dream, constantly shadowing (literally, in the Ian Fleming --
and sometimes, Inspector Clouseau -- sense of the word) the Cuban national team
until hooking Osvaldo Fernandez and Livan Hernandez, both of whom would later
pitch for the Giants.
He is a spicy character here, and despite some of his more shady aspects,
you can't help but admire his creative bravado. Cubas perfected the "third
country" approach to defection: If players defect to the United States,
they are subject to the major-league draft and cannot choose their team. If they
defect to another country, say, Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, they are
free to negotiate with any team -- and sign for a lot more.
Cubas and other recruiters had a golden opportunity in the mid-1990s,
because with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba's major economic
benefactor no longer existed. With the U.S. trade embargo still in effect,
Castro instituted an economic contingency plan that was designed in case of war.
He called it the "Special Period in Time of Peace" -- which meant
strict rations and nightly blackouts that make the rolling ones around here seem
like just an annoying little flicker.
El Duque was considered a god in Cuba, a country where baseball is seen as a
shining light amid the economic darkness. Castro himself played baseball, and
is said to personally run the sport there.
But the popular pitcher fell out of government favor and was banned from
playing baseball for life, ostensibly for crimes against the state (he was
thought to be planning to defect, which really wasn't true initially). He was
even interrogated by the police after a suspected American baseball recruiter
was arrested in Havana.
"At this point it may be helpful to consider the Orwellian logic of the
events now unfolding," Fainaru and Sanchez write. "A man is being
held for recruiting baseball players. In the course of the (Cuban) government's
investigation, certain players have fallen under suspicion for a crime that
they might commit. That crime is choosing to leave their desperate island-
nation, its economy reduced to ashes, to play a game they love for millions of
dollars against the toughest competition in the world."
Included in the book are many great vignettes about how some players adjust
to life in a capitalistic society, which Fainaru and Sanchez likened to "passing
through a door in the 1940s and emerging in the 1990s."
Livan Hernandez bought an expensive car every three months, and his
obsession with fast food almost cost him his career (maybe, with his early
season woes this year, Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti should check his
cholesterol level).
When Ariel Prieto signed with the A's, he received a $1.2 million signing
bonus. The concept of a check was foreign to the player, so he shrugged and
shoved it into his back pocket.
"I got the check on a Thursday and forgot about it," said Prieto,
who is now with the Devil Rays. "Then, over the weekend, I threw the jeans
in the wash. . . . When I got to the bank, the manager was like, 'What's this?'
"
But the heart and soul of this book is El Duque, a vibrant character who
honestly loved Cuba and Castro and was virtually forced to defect. His
generosity and sunny optimism was infectious. "Todo bien!" ("All
is well!") was his common greeting, even while jogging through his rundown
Havana neighborhood as he endured his public disgrace.
E-mail G. Allen Johnson at ajohnson@sfchronicle.com.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
The Duke of Havana : Baseball,
Cuba, and the Search for the American Dream
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