Product Description

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1385412 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-20
• Released on: 2001-03-20
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.90" h x .80" w x 6.00" l, 1.09 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With unparalleled access to players, coaches and agents in the U.S. and Cuba, Fainaru and Sanchez deliver a riveting account of the Cuban baseball establishment and the players it spawned, many of whom have defected in recent years to America to seek fame, fortune and freedom. The biggest star among the former Cuban players is the focal point of the book, New York Yankee pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. Fainaru, a Boston Globe reporter, and Newsday columnist Sanchez go into tremendous detail about Hernandez 's fall from grace as the best-known player in Cuba to his whirlwind escape that eventually landed him a multimillion-dollar contract with the Yankees. The authors clear up some El Duque mysteries, such as his age; and, in an engrossing section, they track Hernandez's harrowing flight from Cuba, including four days stranded on Anguilla Cay, a brief stint in a Bahamian jail and his arrival in Costa Rica, where his agent Joe Cubas had arranged a workout for the pitcher before major league scouts. Cubas, the most colorful of a host of characters in the book, was one of the first to represent defecting Cuban players and was behind the scheme that called for Cuban players to establish residency in another country before signing with a major league team a move that made the players free agents and thus made them available to the highest bidder. But not everyone in the complex network that ferrets players from Cuba to the U.S. finds a pot of gold. In a tragic case, agent Juan Ignacio is serving 15 years in a Cuban jail for encouraging players to defect. Part sports narrative, part tale of Cold War intrigue, it's a first-rate read. (on sale Mar. 20) Forecast: El Duque's inside story is causing a stir, with inclusion on Talk's top 10 list, a forthcoming article in Maxim, and a first serial in The Boston Globe Magazine. Expect solid sales.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Two journalists (Fainaru of the Boston Globe and Sanchez of Newsday) whose beat is Latin America have teamed up for an insightful view of Cuban baseball. Focusing primarily on the incredible story of New York Yankees' pitcher and Cuban great Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who escaped from Cuba in a small boat and pitched nine months later in the World Series, the authors do not shy away from controversy. Even readers with little interest in baseball will find this book intriguing. Recommended for larger libraries.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Drama, romance, intrigue: all of that and more took the mound when Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez came to pitch for the Yankees in 1998. The authors, who write for the Boston Globe and New York Newsday, respectively, have fashioned a complicated and deeply political tale, untangling how El Duque made the enormous leap from Cuba, where he was banned for life from professional baseball, to the Yankees and the World Series. There are actually two books here, making the narrative often overlong: one is the El Duque saga, including the stories of his father, the original El Duque, and his half-brother, Livan, and covering El Duque's life as a player in Cuba and the intrigue surrounding his banning from Cuban baseball and his escape. The other story concerns the complex underground--composed of baseball fanatics, Cuban Americans, and major-league scouts--that tracks Cuban players and makes defections possible. And El Duque's escape? It wasn't exactly on a raft. Exhaustively researched by writers who appear to have been everywhere and talked to everyone. GraceAnne DeCandido
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