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from Aug. 8, 2000 |
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STAN ISAACS Out of Left Field |
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By
STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
I WENT DOWN to Cuba in 1998 as part of an Ernest Hemingway conference.
Before the trip I approached the Mets' shortstop, Rey Ordonez,
a Cuban defector, to ask him if there was anything special I
should do or look for in Havana. Ordonez, who knew more English
than he chose to acknowledge, knew what I was talking about,
but he wasn't interested in talking about it. He blew me off.
In
Cuba the academics heard papers on the famed author's work, visited
Hemingway's home outside Havana, stopped in at Havana bars where
he hung out and visited other sites associated with him. At one
point we were were flown to the middle of the country to stay
at a new posh beach resort built by a Dutch company in partnership
with the Cuban government, which is desperate for tourist dollars.
That was to be a launching spot from where we were scheduled
to take a boat out into the waters off Cuba. We would go there
not because Hemingway himself went there, but because a character
in his none-too-memorable novel, "Islands in the Stream"
plied those waters looking for German submarines during World
War II. What the experience was supposed to do for higher learning
was beyond me. As it turned out, the waters were rough that day
and the Cuban boat captains had to tell the disappointed academicians
that the trip was off.
As we flew back to Havana the next mornng, my friend Ruth Prigozy
of the Hofstra English department, struck up a conversation on
the plane in pidgin English-Spanish with a good-looking man who
looked to be in his late thirties. He was the architect who had
designed the resort where we had stayed. Somehow the subject
of baseball came up. I joined the conversation and asked if he
knew about the Mets' Rey Ordonez. His face lit up. He showed
me an identification card which showed that his name was Ordonez,
too. He said that Rey Ordonez was his cousin.
We talked for a while and he asked if I could send him a poster,
i.e. post card, of Ordonez. I said I would. Prigozy took a picture
of Ordonez and me when we landed.
A
few days later I went to Shea Stadium and approached Rey Ordonez
before the game in the Mets clubhouse. I showed him the picture
of the Cuban and me and told him the story of meeting him. I
asked if that was Rey's cousin. Ordonez showed little interest.
He said he didn't know the man. I was surprised. The Cuban seemed
so sincere, I found it hard to believe he was not telling the
truth. I was disappointed.
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Rey Ordonez, the Cuban defector to American baseball, had no advice for Isaacs' trip to Cuba. |
I later mentioned this and my disappointment to Gary Cohen, a
Mets' radio broadcaster. Cohen told me that the Cuban Ordonez
may not have been lying.
"When Rey Ordonez defected from Cuba," he said, "I
understand he left a wife and family back there and remarried
here. Maybe he just didn't want to acknowledge any ties to any
family back there."
There was some corroboration for this in a book about Cuban sports
called "Pitching Around Fidel." Author S.L. Price writes,
"Ordonez is, according to his ex-wife, Hilda Maria Fiallo,
whom he left in Cuba, a deadbeat dad and a dumb jock who reneged
on his promised to his family."
When the U.S. immigration officials had to send troops in to
rescue little Elian Gonzalez from the fanatic Miami relatives
who were defying court orders, the Cuban defector ball players
here reacted with a protest, sitting out one day's games. Mets
coach Cookie Rojas, a militant objector to the regime of Fidel
Castro, seemingly took Ordonez in hand and they both sat out
one game. Rojas was full of the kind of talk of the Miami relatives
about the lack of freedom in Cuba as if it was one great concentration
camp.
We found nothing like that when we were there. We talked to people
who were not reluctant to criticize government. We found a vital
people, music-crazed. They liked Americans, but did not like
the American government. It fueled our anger at our government
for maintaining a decades long embargo that was only hurting
the Cuban people, while providing justification for Castro to
blame the U.S. for so much of Cuba's problems.
The Cubans were, in the main, abjectly poor. Castro's socialist
revolution had improved literacy and produced great doctors,
but the people struggled. The economy, has been devastated by
the American embargo and the pullout of Russian aid when the
Russians overthrew the Soviets. We found professionals who moonlighted
by driving taxis because they could earn more money that way
than they could as doctors, engineers and the like.
Marvin Miller, the former head of the baseball players's union
who brought so many benefits to the players, usually has been
a willy-nilly supporter of the players. Not in this case. He
objected to the demonstration by the Cubans. He said, "I
felt they wre being used by the Cuban community. They didn't
understand that this was a political gesture getting in the middle
of an anti-Castro movement."
The ball players who left Cuba, I have no doubt, were less concerned
about freedom of speech and the like, than the chance to make
money. People like Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez of the Yankees,
signed major league contracts worth millions. If the United States
was the poor country and Cuba was rich, for sure American players
would be jumping to Cuba, just as some American players, Sal
Maglie among them, jumped to the Mexican League after World War
II when they could make more money there than they were being
paid in the United States.
©
2000 by Stan Isaacs
The cartoon is from the IMSI MasterClips collection, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
You can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an e-mail to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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