Delivering A Strong Pitch

In Cuba he's one of the best, period. The ace of Havana's Industriales, who recently won the Cuban National Series, Orlando for eight years has been a member of the world-beating national team, which is favored to win yet another gold medal at this summer's Olympics. Children across the island imitate him, prodigies who kick high and jerk the glove low behind the leg and call themselves El Duque. His 129-46 lifetime record gives him the highest winning percentage (.737) in the history of the Cuban League. "He's a great pitcher," says Al Avila, the Marlins' director of Latin American operations. "I could see him pitching in the major leagues."

So could El Duque himself. But he has commitments his single half-brother doesn't have—a wife, two children—that make leaving Cuba tortuous. People say to him all the time, "Man, Livan's a millionaire; you could be rich too." "I know my talent," Orlando says, "but I won't desert to see it come to fruition."

In Cuba, Livan had no car and lived in a room in his mother's apartment. In the U.S. he has bought only clothes and shoes and has taken a room in the team hotel, but he has changed anyway. In his first appearance in a Marlins uniform, he stood on a mound in Melbourne, Fla., with his hat over his heart, listening to a new national anthem. "I didn't feel strange at all," he says.

He will. No matter how serene Hernandez seems, his life has become a surreal clash between then and now. Six months ago he lugged his overused bicycle up five flights of stairs. Today he poses beside a gleaming white limousine the size of a small swimming pool, as some high-rolling Miami pals in Marlins shirts snap picture after picture while their bodyguards look on. They laugh a lot. Livan grins, bewildered. Then he gets in the car.

Hernandez was just 20 when he defected. "It was a very difficult decision," he says. "You leave everything behind." He was hoping to marry one girl in Cuba when he left, and then he got engaged to another in the Dominican Republic after defecting. Now that wedding is off. "He was our mascot, the little guy," El Duque says sitting in his home in Havana. "What he likes is blonde girls and lollipops."

Yet Livan was mature enough to understand the step he was taking and savvy enough to depend on Cubas, a 35-year-old agent who had made a name by spiriting another Cuban pitcher, Osvaldo Fernandez, on an all-night drive last July from a tournament in Millington, Tenn., to Miami. So when a woman approached Hernandez on the field in Monterrey last Sept. 25, he wasn't surprised to open her autograph book and find a picture of Cubas with a phone number scribbled below. "Call him," she said.

Hernandez began to shake and sweat. At 11 p.m. that night he phoned Cubas. At 1 a.m. Cubas parked behind a restaurant across the street from the dorm where the Cuban team was staying. He says he saw Hernandez emerge with his bags, "sobbing and very nervous." So nervous, he was in the middle of the road before he saw a car bearing down on him. He jumped back, the car swerved off, and he and Cubas were left alone in the night. "Right at that moment, I felt I was free," Hernandez says. "It was the beginning of freedom."

Several hours later El Duque woke to go to the toilet. He and Livan shared bags, gloves and clothes on the road, and on this trip they shared a room with three other players. "Since he's my brother, I looked at his bed," Orlando says. "I thought, He's in the bathroom. Then I thought, He's young, probably with some girl. But I checked for his bags, and they were gone." He grins. "At least he left me my spikes and gloves. He took everything else."

Orlando wasn't prepared for how empty he would feel. "Every day I was turning the corner again, looking for him," El Duque says. "Every day I'm saying to myself, And I'm here with the team? So much thinking. It exhausted me."

It didn't ease the sleep of major league executives, either. Previous Cuban defectors had been assigned to a major league organization either through the annual June amateur draft or a special lottery. But, as he had done with Fernandez, who now pitches for the San Francisco Giants, Cubas exploited a gaping loophole: The above procedure applies only if a player receives residence status in Canada, Puerto Rico or the U.S. So Cubas took Hernandez to the Dominican Republic to establish residency and showcase his game in the winter league—risky because baseball could have fought to keep the status quo. "We encountered a lot of resistance," Cubas says. "I didn't speak to any club that thought this would go through." But on Dec. 1 the commissioner's office stated that there was nothing to stop Cubas from shopping those players as free agents. "Give him credit," Marlins general manager Dave Dombrowski says. "He was trying to beat the system and was forced to use a lot of ingenuity—and he did it." Then again, Dombrowski can be magnanimous: The Marlins got Hernandez.