Wednesday, April 11 El Duque's story captivates the reader By Jim Caple Special to ESPN.com |
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With Stephen King failing to deliver readers his much anticipated new book of horror, "The General Manager Who Gave Tom Gordon a Longterm Contract," the baseball publishing event of the past winter was Scott Boras's 70-page brochure on Alex Rodriguez. I'm still waiting for Amazon.com to discount it 40 percent, but apparently the tome told the Dickensian saga of a shortstop's struggles for a $252 million contract after a life spent toiling in the blacking warehouses of the major leagues ("Chapter One: I am born'"). Fortunately, a new season is upon us, and with it, the traditional flurry of new baseball books hitting shelves as if thrown there by Chuck Knoblauch. And no doubt, many of them will gather as much dust as Jose Canseco. After all, was the reading public screaming for Don Zimmer's autobiography, "Zim"'? Or "Bob Feller's Little Black Book of Baseball Wisdom?" Or yet another collection of Yogi Berra quotes? At least we can be grateful that there is no sequel to Darryl Strawberry's 1999 self-help book, "Recovering Life." (What was the publisher thinking when it signed off on that one?) Fortunately, there is much worth reading. Probably the season's most eagerly awaited book is Roger Angell's collaboration with David Cone, "A Pitcher's Story," due in May. Given the writer, the player and the subject, that promises to be a classic, but even so it may not be the year's best baseball book. That's because the best baseball book in years, "The Duke of Havana," by Steve Fainaru and Ray Sanchez, is already in stores. As the title suggests, the subject is Yankees pitcher Orlando Hernandez, but what makes this book so good and so engrossing is that it is about so much more than baseball. While "The Duke of Havana" relates El Duque's remarkable escape from Cuba in scrupulous, dramatic detail (despite later suspicion, the boat story was essentially as Hernandez first described it), the book also examines life in Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S.-Cuban relations, the Miami Cuban community and its influence on U.S. policy and agent Joe Cubas' occasionally shady negotiations with Cuban players. El Duque can occasionally come off as difficult and uncommunicative to reporters he doesn't know and who don't speak his language. But Fainaru (a former baseball beat writer and Latin American correspondent) and Sanchez earned his trust over the years, visiting him when he still lived in a cinderblock shack in Havana and was a lonely, frustrated pitcher banned by the Cuban government from official competition. It was that 1996 suspension that eventually drove El Duque to leave Cuba, but before he did, he stayed close to the game by playing in a neighborhood league with such little equipment that one game had to be halted when the lone bat broke. Because of the years spent following Hernandez and their considerable reporting skills, the authors provide readers revealing glimpses into El Duque's life, plus those of his family and friends. That includes Fainaru's search for and first meeting with the father of Orlando and Livan Hernandez -- the original El Duque, who was a famed pitcher in Cuba. " 'Did you meet Marlon?' (El Duque Sr. asked about his youngest son). I said that indeed I had, adding that he looked like an athlete. El Duque then dispelled the notion that the Cuban government could prevent his fourth son from becoming a major league player. " 'This one,' El Duque said proudly, 'this one is for the Cleveland Indians.' " After a thorough, gripping account of El Duque's life in Cuba and with the Yankees, the book fittingly closes with a poignant debate among his friends about whether life was better in Cuba and whether the pitcher was more secure there. The answer, like so many things with El Duque, is not as simple as it first appears. I could go on about this book like Steve Stone during a rain delay, but just do yourself a favor. Buy "The Duke of Havana," even if it means delaying a purchase of your favorite team's weekend special alternate road cap. For the same price, you can buy yourself a ticket to an extraordinary land and a fascinating story.
Box score line of the spring But this week's award goes to Seattle's Edgar Martinez, who went to the plate five times against Oakland on Tuesday night and wound up with this minimalist line: 1 AB, 1 R, 1 H, 1 RBI In addition to homering, Edgar walked four times. In his first four games against Oakland this season, he's reached base 17 times in 19 plate appearances -- nine hits and eight walks. Evidently, the Athletics are pitching him carefully, but not carefully enough.
Lies, damn lies and statistics
From left field Stargell, who began his career before free agency and ended it after the first million-dollar ballplayer, was a rarity in baseball, no matter the era: a player who spent his entire career with one team. How Stargell's 21 years in Pittsburgh stack up against the others who never had to submit a change of address form to the U.S. Postal Service:
Not too surprisingly, all the above are in the Hall of Fame, except for Ripken, who will be. You don't hang around in one place that long without being very, very good.
Win Blake Stein's money Q. Who was the only player to be a league MVP, playoff MVP and World Series MVP in the same season?
Power rankings
A. Willie Stargell, who also became the oldest league MVP (age 39) when he shared the award with Keith Hernandez in 1979.
Voice of summer Jim Caple is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com. |
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