Word: fernandez
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...OSVALDO FERNANDEZ AND LIVAN Hernandez, the distance between Cuba and the U.S. is not the 75 miles of the Caribbean, and not the almost 40 years of bitter and sometimes deadly conflict. It is the 60 ft. 6 in. between the rubber and the plate...
...Fernandez and Hernandez are pitchers, far better pitchers than Fidel Castro ever was, so good that they were national heroes in Cuba. As such, they were given certain entitlements. In the case of Fernandez, the best pitcher for Cuba during the past Olympics, the privileged life included a Moskvich car, immunity from food shortages, $5 a month in wages and closely guarded travel with the national team. Nobody was watching, though, when he slipped out of his motel in Millington, Tennessee, at 7 a.m. last July and got into a van that drove him to Miami...
...January, Hernandez, 21, signed a four-year, $4.5 million deal with the Marlins, and Fernandez, 27, accepted a three-year, $3.2 million package from the San Francisco Giants. Other teams offered more, but Hernandez chose the Marlins because "Miami tastes like Cuba," while Fernandez opted for the Giants because of their Latin tradition--Juan Marichal, the Alou brothers--and because they needed pitching...
None other than Castro himself thinks the Marlins got the better arm. But Hernandez may be too young for the majors this season, even though he had two scoreless innings in his spring-training debut last Wednesday. The more experienced Fernandez has already been penciled into the Giants' rotation. Their weekly meal money alone--$563--is almost 10 times what they made in a year in Cuba. "Maybe one day they will come back to Cuba and bring their money with them," Castro told TIME last week...
...first Cuban national-team member to defect, and he soon established himself with the St. Louis Cardinals. There have been a few other defectors--Oakland Athletics pitcher Ariel Prieto and New York Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez--whom the Cubans tried to dismiss as second-rank malcontents. But when Fernandez got into Cubas' van last July, they could no longer make that claim. He was, after all, 22-0 in international competition, with a 1.62 era. And he was not considered a security risk...