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.

Who's perfect? Only a few pitchers in baseball

Love this shot. I took it in Jamestown, Va.

Donatists: Ever hear of them?

They were a Christian sect that existed in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. in, primarily, the Roman provinces in Africa. Alright, now...why should anyone care?

Well, the Donatists considered themselves the "true Church" because they had a zero-defect philosophy that was nearly impossible for anyone I know to ever come close to living.

If someone was a priest within the Donatist faith and...say...they lied or cheated, stole or somehow did something wrong; the Church would refuse to allow any marriages, christenings...anything that priest did to stand. So, let's say you were married by Father Joe when you're 18, but 20 years later Father Joe is caught stealing from the poor box. The way it went would go something like this: Father Joe is defrocked (unmade as a priest), then everything he did as part of his office for his entire career is unmade with him.

This was the home of a zealot in Lincoln, NE I shot.

Remember when Father Joe married you 20 years ago, and you had children and they might have had children and Father Joe had done all the marriages and christenings? Well, none of them took place in the eyes of the Donatist Church. That was a real, live problem for people.

The Donatists lived in a Christian world of black and white with no gray in-between.

On a certain level, that is admirable. But, it's just not the way Jesus taught, to my view. Who knows anything about perfect loyalty? Lots of people would raise their hand, knowing they were lying like a rug. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect in life. It's possible to be perfect, I guess, if you're a baseball pitcher.

The only thing I do perfectly is being a New York Mets fan. Why? They demand nothing from me. I don't have to do a thing to just love the Mets. It's easy to love a sports team because there is no way of being unfaithful to them (other than rooting against them, I suppose).

Love has a lot to do with a lot. I think it is something at the core of our spiritual journey. But, being perfect in love is a lot harder than it might seem at first. So what am I jabbering on about if no one is perfect? Well, that's just it -- no one is perfect.

People try and stumble, try and stumble again. Then they try and they don't stumble, but they are hit in the face with a tree limb (how'd that get there?). I don't know how anyone else feels about it, but I'm going to keep trying to get it right. Maybe we're not measured in perfection by God (for those who believe). Maybe, we're just measured by how many times we can stumble and keep trying to get up.