One came by boat with his wife and a few friends. The other sneaked away from Fidel Castro’s team in Saltillo, Mexico, working his way north until he reached San Diego and political asylum.
With Orlando Hernandez and Jose Contreras, their styles are as unusual as their stories. Their presence on the White Sox guarantees this will be a fascinating season, and possibly a successful one.
The plan is for Contreras and Hernandez to work beside each other in a starting rotation headed by Mark Buehrle and Freddy Garcia. If things click for the two Cubans–if “El Duque” can stay healthy and Contreras can throw more strikes and avoid early-inning meltdowns–they could become a major story line in the American League.
Several Cuban pitchers have become big-league stars, most notably Camilo Pascual, Luis Tiant, Hernandez and his half-brother Livan Hernandez. But not since the mid-1950s, when the White Sox had Sandy Consuegra and Mike Fornieles and the then-Washington Senators had Pascual and Pedro Ramos, has a major-league staff had two Cubans working together. What will that mean?
“That is one of those questions for the end of the year,” Hernandez said. “If we do what we can, you probably won’t have to ask the question because you will see what it means. It will be a big year for both of us and for the team. We will enjoy each other and help the team win.”
In the beginning
Hernandez and Contreras were both widely pursued when they made themselves available to major-league teams. The Yankees got them both, outbidding the Anaheim Angels for Hernandez and the Boston Red Sox for Contreras.
The Red Sox had pursued Contreras with such ardor that his rejection prompted club President Larry Lucchino to deem the Yankees baseball’s “Evil Empire.”
Easy lives have not come with their big contracts. Each man has been torn apart emotionally by the inability to go home and pay last respects to a deceased father. For El Duque it was four years ago, right before he faced the Seattle Mariners in an AL Championship Series game. For Contreras it was four months ago, just after his first season with the White Sox ended.
But things seem to have taken a good turn for both. The White Sox signed Hernandez as a free agent, reuniting the two Cuban legends. They will work for a pitching coach, Don Cooper, who long ago forged a personal bond with Tiant.
Hernandez speaks English but prefers to do interviews with help from an interpreter, most often third-base coach Joey Cora. Contreras, who came to the United States in 2002, five years after Hernandez, is not as comfortable with the language.
El Duque, wise beyond his years, however many they may be–he’s listed as 35 but could be quite a bit older–wants to help Contreras, whom the Sox acquired from the Yankees for Esteban Loaiza last July 31. Contreras is listed as 33.
The breakup, reunion
While both pitchers have spent most of their careers with the Yankees, they overlapped only for small parts of the 2004 season. Hernandez had been traded to Montreal in the three-team deal that sent Bartolo Colon to the White Sox before Contreras’ first spring training as a Yankee. The Yanks re-signed El Duque after he missed 2003 with a shoulder injury. They were together briefly in spring training last year, but when the season started Hernandez stayed behind to finish his recovery from shoulder surgery.
Hernandez didn’t join the rotation until July 11, and Contreras was dealt to the Sox three weeks later. He had allowed 28 runs in 15 1/3 innings over five career starts against Boston, an unforgivable sin in George Steinbrenner’s world.
Only recently had Contreras been reunited with his wife and daughters in New York. He was confused by the trade and saddened that he would not have Hernandez as a teammate.
“I never expected that,” Contreras said. “I was devastated because El Duque had just gotten there. I thought he was going to help me. He was sad about it too. I told him goodbye and we hugged each other. I told him, `Don’t worry about me. We’ll be together again soon.'”
The countrymen share many things, including some unusual baseball practices. They play catch with a heavy, oversized baseball that scares trainers and pitching coaches. They also toss around a softball, in the belief it makes it easier for them to execute the same pitches with a baseball.
The coach
Cooper might be the perfect pitching coach for the Cubans. As a teenager with baseball aspirations, his two favorite pitchers were Tom Seaver, as technically sound as anyone, and Tiant, who won 229 games by being unconventional. Tiant was famous for twisting so much in his delivery that hitters could read the back of his jersey, yet he was precise with a vast repertoire of pitches.
“I’ve always felt that Cuban pitchers, the ones who float up on shore, they can really pitch,” Cooper said. “You know they’ve got heart and [guts] or they wouldn’t take the trip in a raft. They just know how to pitch. It seems like they all share a feel for pitching.”
After warming up to start a game, Tiant once tossed a ball into the seats to a 15-year-old Cooper, who years later would repay the favor by recommending Tiant for a job as a minor-league pitching coach with the White Sox. Cooper still looks forward to trips to Boston because he gets to visit with Tiant, who spends much of his time in retirement at Fenway Park.
Like Tiant, Hernandez is a trip on the mound. He starts his delivery by raising his left knee so high that he could bloody his nose if he lost his balance. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen from there.
“That’s classic,” Cooper said of the leg kick. “It’s the same thing as Tiant twisting, wheeling and throwing. They used to say Tiant had 1,000 different pitches from 1,000 different places. I’d say [Hernandez] has 500 different pitches from 500 different places.”
Winners
Hernandez has an average build but a contortionist’s body. When he stretches before a game, it’s as if every one of his hinges is double-jointed.
Contreras, on the other hand, is all about power. He brings a hulking presence to the mound and has the ability to intimidate hitters.
Having learned to win in Cuba, both used the Yankees’ firepower to put together enviable won-lost records. Between them they are 81-51, a .614 winning percentage.
If they hold up for 60-plus starts this season and the White Sox win at that same pace, it would translate to a 39-25 record in those starts. Few teams see such possibilities out of their third and fourth starters.
But that’s the view through rose-colored glasses. The reality is they no longer have Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams to help them win, Hernandez hasn’t made 29 starts in a season since 2000 and Contreras must rebuild his confidence after ending his first two seasons with a 4.85 ERA.
Potentially dominating
Contreras’ ability to fluctuate between domination and self-destruction makes him the Cuban Bobby Witt. But the White Sox are paying him $6 million a year because they believe he still may emerge as an ace.
“He’s got a chance to be dominating,” Cooper said. “He has the 95 [m.p.h.] fastball he can run up there, at the top of the strike zone, and then he has the forkball from hell.”
Cooper believes Contreras must do a better job with his first three pitches to hitters. He reduces his effectiveness by falling behind in the count.
Hernandez first saw Contreras pitch when he was in Cuba’s developmental leagues and believes his friend just needs to get back to being himself. He believes Contreras should rely more on his forkball, his best pitch.
The White Sox had counseled him to throw more fastballs and fewer forkballs last season, when he was 5-4 with a 5.30 ERA in 13 starts in August and September. He had 42 walks in only 74 2/3 innings.
“One thing that has hurt him is he listens to everybody,” Hernandez said. “Everybody tells him what to do. He wants to make them happy, so he does it. Everybody sees he has all the pitches to be successful. They say he throws too many fastballs or too many forkballs or too many sliders. …
“He was a good pitcher before he got [to the U.S.]. He needs to pitch like that.”
Fleeing Cuba
Hernandez had been forced to work as a hospital janitor because Castro feared he might defect, and he left Cuba under mysterious circumstances, like thousands of his countrymen. He said he fled on a raft, winding up on a small island without food or water.
Contreras had been viewed as more loyal to the Castro regime until disappearing when the national team was in Saltillo, Mexico.
To avoid being declared eligible for the draft, which would have robbed him of his leverage and given lesser teams a chance to claim him, Contreras established residency in Nicaragua. That’s where the Red Sox put a full-court press on him.
General manager Theo Epstein at one point rented all the hotel rooms in the small town where Contreras was staying so the Yankees would not have as much access to him. But Contreras wanted to be on El Duque’s team, and there was little the Red Sox could do to change that.
Had Contreras known the Yankees were about to trade Hernandez, he might have been more open-minded about Boston. But he had more important things on his mind.
A tough go
While Contreras enjoyed the perks secured by the four-year, $32 million deal he signed after a bidding war between the Red Sox and Yankees, his wife, Miriam, and their two daughters were left behind in Cuba. They had been told late in 2002 that they would have to wait five years to be given the documentation necessary to leave their homeland.
Contreras says he would dream about his daughters, only to wake up and find himself alone. “They wouldn’t be there and I would start to cry,” he said in a 2004 interview.
But Miriam, 11-year-old Naylan and 3-year-old Naylenis succeeded in traveling from Cuba to Florida’s Big Pine Key last June. They made the trip in a group of 22 refugees aboard a speedboat. Contreras flew to Miami for the reunion, only about six weeks before he would be traded.
“It’s what I dreamed about the last two years,” he said.
Hernandez saw his friend’s loneliness when they were together last spring. He believes Contreras is much happier now, which could lead to a turnaround on the mound.
“The family thing, that was really, really tough on him,” Hernandez said. “When you leave [Cuba] like we left, you know you cannot go back. You do not know if you will ever see your family again. That is real, real tough.”
Contreras enjoyed his time in Chicago last summer. He tells Hernandez he will like living and playing here.
Hernandez, who has seen it all, isn’t too worried.
“I don’t know what the difference will be between New York and Chicago,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going there to play baseball, and that is my life. It will be a good year.”
