Baseball Great Tiant Discusses Castro's Passing

By JIM PURCELL

In the mid- and late-1970s, baseball was the king of American sports and the biggest show on the stage was the rivalry between the "Bronx Bombing" New York Yankees and the Red Sox in the American League East. On that stage, no one cared that side-armed pitching phenom Luis Tiant was a Cuban refugee. What they cared about most was his killer curve balls and exploding sliders. Today, though, one of Cuba's most notable exiles remembers the life of the late Fidel Castro, who died a few days ago at 90 years old.

Luis Tiant today

In an article posted today by the Washington Post, by Des Bieler, Tiant discussed his thoughts about Castro.

Tiant said Cuba produced a great deal of Latin American players in Major League Baseball until the Castro regime "set everything back." He noted that there were generations of ball players who never had the chance to succeed at their sport. Though he was a famed starting pitcher, Tiant said that, at the time he left Cuba as a young man, there were 50 or 60 players better than him.

Luis Tiant in the 1970s

What Tiant reflected upon was the loss of opportunity for the Cuban people, not just baseball players but certainly them. At the time Castro came to absolute, untethered power in 1961, Tiant was playing professional baseball in Mexico and did not return home.

One of the consequences to his decision was that Tiant would not be reunited with his parents, who were Cuban residents, until 1975. And, it wasn't until 2007 that the cigar-smoking former big league pitcher was able to return to his homeland without the threat of imprisonment.

Somberly, Tiant said that the exact number of people who lost their lives trying to make the passage between Cuba and Florida, often in rickety boats and rafts, would never be known. Was it 20,000? 100,000? A million? Tiant said the world may never know exactly how many people perished reaching for freedom, but for him it was 40. "They all died. All of them. Just gone," he said.

Castro was an avid lover of the sport of baseball and there are unsubstantiated reports the former dictator came close to being signed by a professional team in the United States during his youth.

With Castro gone now, Tiant warned it was not yet time to celebrate the end of totalitarianism in Cuba yet. He explained the Castro regime is still in place, albeit without their inspirational leader.

Tiant likened the passing of the Cuban despot to a "little door cracking open" for the future. He concluded with his hope that, one day, Cuba would be open again -- for its people to travel as they like and for its exiles to finally return home.