Human Condition: Bonding with my father on the baseball field

Those familiar with Cuban culture know that the passion for baseball runs deeply through their veins.

Even as a toddler in our hometown of Cienfuegos, I would keenly await my father’s return from the office to commence our traditional ritual of pitch-and-catch. I was born a lefty, a matter of deep concern to my father, whose heroes were Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. So one day, he simply made me a right-hander, noting determinedly that “there are no southpaws in center field in Yankee Stadium.”

Fidel Castro and his Communist revolution forestalled my father’s lofty dreams for me. Leaving almost everything and everyone behind, our family fled Cuba in 1960 to settle in New Orleans to start a new life. Yet, not even our financial struggles or the demands of six-day work weeks could fully extinguish my father’s longing for the game of his youth.

Within a couple of years, our small community of Cuban exile families commenced to gather on the fields of Audubon Park on many a Sunday afternoon for informal picnics that thrived on exchanging gossip from the homeland, and always culminated in the choosing of sides for a friendly but heated game of softball among the men, young and old. I rarely got to play, and then only in late innings in the lonely hinterlands of right field. I longed for one day being called to pitch, but that wish seemed a distant dream.

By the summer of 1963, I was a 10-year-old fifth grader, still religiously attending these Sunday gatherings with fingers crossed. The 20-something pitcher on my father’s team was named Carlitos, employed as a pharmacist at a downtown store. One day, he spotted a disheveled young man passing out pro-Castro leaflets on the adjoining sidewalk and hastened to confront him. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald. A scuffle ensued, and both men were arrested for disturbing the peace.

Carlitos was unable to make the following Sunday’s game, though his heroic exploits were on the lips of every conversation. And then it happened. As sides were being chosen, my father nonchalantly asked his teammates to let me pitch — but on one condition. He wanted to play on the opposing team. To my amazement, he went five-for-five that day, punctuated with a wicked drag bunt down the first base line. As he stood on first, my quick glance spotted a loving smile and knowing wink to his admiring son.