The Duke of Havana

Informationen zum Autor Steve Fainaru is an investigative sportswriter for The Wash-ington Post. He was a reporter for The Boston Globe for eleven years, covering major-league baseball, Wall Street, and Latin America. He lives in Washington, D.C. Ray Sanchez writes a column for Newsday, where he served four years as Latin America correspondent. He lives in New York City. Klappentext The Duke of Havana is the inside story of Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, fallen hero of the Cuban revolution. Banned by the Castro government for plotting to defect and shunned by Cuban society, the finest pitcher in Cuba's history fearlessly turned his internal exile into a political crusade. He ultimately escaped his country in a twenty-four-foot boat and, nine months later, triumphed in the World Series with the New York Yankees. Present throughout his story are the immensely talented Cuban players whose lives reflect the slow death of Cuban socialism. Also present is the Castro-hating Miami-based sports agent Joe Cubas, whose audacious, secret plots have transformed him into a major political figure in the Cuban exile community's relentless war to topple Castro.These personal stories illuminate the rising political and social tensions in Cuba, the growing status of the Catholic Church in the country's affairs, major league baseball's astonishingly corrupt system for recruiting players, its systematic violation of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and the historic role of baseball in U.S.-Cuba relations.Reported in the United States and Cuba by two award-winning journalists who became part of the story they were reporting, The Duke of Havana is a riveting story of sports, politics, and greed. Leseprobe Chapter One Todo Bien The day he dropped dead, Arnaldo Hernández had never been more alive. He had begun his morning early, clearing a flowerbed for his girlfriend, Arelis Ruiz, and burning the weeds and the dead leaves in a mini bonfire in front of their house in rural Havana. Then he headed out. It was April 22, 1994, an ordinary day, another day to get by. Arnaldo had been working two jobs. On most days he clipped hair for five pesos a head at the local barbershop or occasionally on his front porch. On nights and weekends, he manned the front door of the Circulo Social, a community center and disco, tossing out the bad drunks and letting in his friends for free. He also played first base for San Miguel, a provincial league team on the other side of the capital. With relentless good cheer, he shuttled between these various responsibilities, shouting out "Todo bién!" from the seat of his Chinese-made bicycle, a beater that he often loaded up with his girlfriend, his glove and his beloved white poodle, Duque. He seemed more than able to balance it all. He was thirty years old, six-foot-four, well over two hundred pounds. "He had so much energy," said Arelis. "Sometimes he'd make these trips all day without eating." Arnaldo and his younger brother, Orlando, had grown up inseparable. The boys were less than two years apart in age, and they had slept in the same bed until they were in their teens. The bed had finally collapsed one evening under the collective bulk of their expanding, man-child bodies. "Then we moved to the floor," recalled Orlando. Together the boys had acquired an obsession with baseball-the obsession, of course, of the entire nation, but also "the family business," as their uncle "Miñosito," a slick infielder in his own right, had put it. Arnaldo had been huge, "an animal," according to his uncle, a pitcher with a terrifying fastball and a burning ambition to follow in the footsteps of his colorful father, Arnaldo Hernández Montero, the original "El Duque." Orlando was smaller, craftier, more creative on the mound, blessed even as a youth with what one of his coaches called a perra curva, a bitch of a curve. The boys often slept with their gloves on, so as to make it ...

Klappentext

The Duke of Havana is the inside story of Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, fallen hero of the Cuban revolution. Banned by the Castro government for plotting to defect and shunned by Cuban society, the finest pitcher in Cuba's history fearlessly turned his internal exile into a political crusade. He ultimately escaped his country in a twenty-four-foot boat and, nine months later, triumphed in the World Series with the New York Yankees. Present throughout his story are the immensely talented Cuban players whose lives reflect the slow death of Cuban socialism. Also present is the Castro-hating Miami-based sports agent Joe Cubas, whose audacious, secret plots have transformed him into a major political figure in the Cuban exile community's relentless war to topple Castro. These personal stories illuminate the rising political and social tensions in Cuba, the growing status of the Catholic Church in the country's affairs, major league baseball's astonishingly corrupt system for recruiting players, its systematic violation of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and the historic role of baseball in U.S.-Cuba relations. Reported in the United States and Cuba by two award-winning journalists who became part of the story they were reporting, The Duke of Havana is a riveting story of sports, politics, and greed.

Zusammenfassung
In 1998, a mysterious right-handed pitcher emerged from the ashes of the Cold War and helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Championship. His origins and even his age were uncertain. His name was Orlando El Duque Hernandez. He was a fallen hero of Fidel Castro's socialist revolution.

The chronicle of El Duque's triumph is at once a window into the slow death of Cuban socialism and one of the most remarkable sports stories of all time. Once hailed as a paragon of Castro's revolution, the finest pitcher in modern Cuban history was banned from baseball for life for allegedly plotting to defect. Instead of accepting his punishment, he fearlessly fought back, defying the Communist party authorities, vowing to pitch again, and ultimately fleeing his country in the bowels of a thirty-foot fishing boat.

Here, for the first time and in astonishing detail, the secrets behind El Duque's persecution and escape are revealed. Moving from the crumbling streets of post Cold War Havana to the polarized world of exile Miami, from the deadly Florida Straits to the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, it is a story of cloak-and-dagger adventure, audacious secret plots, the pull of big money, and the historic collision of ideologies.

Present throughout are the larger-than-life characters who converged at this bizarre intersection of baseball and politics: El Duque himself, Fidel Castro, the Miami sports agent Joe Cubas, the late John Cardinal O'Connor along with scouts, smugglers, and the Cuban ballplayers who gave up their lives as tools of socialism to test the free market and chase their major-league dreams.

Reported in the United States and Cuba by two award-winning journalists who became part of the story they were covering, The Duke of Havana is a riveting saga of sports, politics, liberation, and greed.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

Todo Bien

The day he dropped dead, Arnaldo Hernández had never been more alive. He had begun his morning early, clearing a flowerbed for his girlfriend, Arelis Ruiz, and burning the weeds and the dead leaves in a mini bonfire in front of their house in rural Havana. Then he headed out. It was April 22, 1994, an ordinary day, another day to get by. Arnaldo had been working two jobs. On most days he clipped hair for five pesos a head at the local barbershop or occasionally on his front porch. On nights and weekends, he manned the front door of the Circulo Social, a community center and disco, tossing out the bad drunks and letting in his friends for free. He also played first base for San Miguel, a provincial league team on the other side of the capital. With relentless good cheer,…