Monday, August 10, 2009

“God let me do what I asked him to do…”

…which was to be able to return to Cuba, the homeland Luis Tiant left in 1961, ostensibly for a three-month stint playing ball in Mexico.

The Red Sox star pitcher with the corkscrew delivery returned to Cuba in 2007, and his story is the subject of a documentary that airs tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. It’s called “The Lost Son of Havana.” Here are reviews from Newsday and The Wall Street Journal.

[Boston Globe photo.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes El Tiante went back but if you followed his career he never had a single good thing to say about what happened to Cuba under Castro so let's not make him the new poster boy for kissing Castro's a--.

chingon

leftside said...

Wow, an amazing documentary. Reading the reviews in the media I expected it to be all about the pobre Cubanos. But it was much more powerful. To have Cubans in "esquina caliente" remember him and treat him with such respect looks like it meant the world to him. And just getting home to see all his family and neighborhood again. There is something so important to that. The guilt he felt for not helping his family out more was very sad. So many are like Tiant and afraid to go back to Cuba, given all the lies that go around Miami (they won't let you back you, they will jail you, etc.). I'll refrain myself from going into my theories about about memory and homeland...