UNDETERRED BY THE INEVITABLE COMPARISONS to his father, Luis Tiant gravitated to the pitcher’s mound. There he met with success—and scrutiny.
He threw the ball so hard—and with so much movement—that in his early teens he was temporarily restricted from pitching in dimly lit night games to protect hitters and catchers from injury. After excelling in Cuba’s Little League and Juvenile League programs, he was selected at age 16 to travel to Mexico City for an international tournament. It was 1957. Fans who saw him there noted that he had inherited his father’s talent, and he felt pride rather than pressure.
The next natural step for a bright, rising ballplayer on the island was ascension to one of four professional teams comprising the Cuban Winter League—a circuit so strong that pro ballplayers from the United States, even major league stars like Willie Mays and Jim Bunning, crossed the Gulf of Mexico and joined the league during their off-seasons. And since one of its four teams—the Havana Sugar Kings—also played a full summer schedule as a top minor-league affiliate for a major league club, a dream formed in Luis’s mind: If he could get the Sugar Kings interested in him, it could lead to a professional contract and the chance, someday, to pitch in the majors.
After turning 18, he told his parents of his desire to try out for the Sugar Kings. Luis Sr. was wary of the plan. Still haunted by memories of the racism and rough living conditions he encountered during the 1930s and ’40s as a Cuban professional ballplayer in the U.S., he feared his only child would receive similar frustration and disappointment were he to travel there.
WHEN I CAME TO understand the harsh treatment my father endured in baseball, I felt bad about it. But it never changed my mind about people. I didn’t worry about race—liking this guy or not liking that guy. Everybody was equal in my eyes; it’s what they did that mattered. I never liked abuse, but I didn’t take crap from anyone either.
If you were bad to some of my friends, you and I had a problem. I was a big kid, and I never liked it when another big kid hit a little kid. If I saw it, I’d fight him. I fought for my friends all the time. I was good to them and they were good to me. We would fight for each other.
One day I fought with a kid who had just moved in. He was trying to be smart, to establish himself as a tough guy by taking on a bigger kid—me. I was in the park, and he hit me with a rock. It broke against my skull, and there was blood everywhere. So, I got a rock and went after him; I wanted to kill him.
There was a woman who used to take care of the kid, like a maid, and she saw me chasing him.
“No, no! Don’t do it!” she yelled. “You’re going to kill him!”
“Look what he did to me!” I yelled back. “If I get him, I’ll beat the shit out of him!”
I didn’t catch him, and on the way home I had to go past where my grandmother lived. I was bleeding all over my shirt and everything, and she came out and cleaned me up. What did my friends do? They all got together and went to the kid’s house. They started throwing rocks at it, and I had to go over there and tell them to stop.
Then, about three days later, I came up to the kid on the sidewalk. This time, I beat the shit out of him.
Because I was an only child, my friends were like brothers to me. No matter what we did, good or bad, we were always together. We didn’t have a lot, and some of us much less than others, but we didn’t care. Friends and family was enough.
Mostly, we played sports. At first, I did a little soccer, a little boxing, and a little running. Then, over time, things started happening.
Somebody punched me in one of my eyes, and that was it for boxing.
I was a 400-meter runner in track, and one day the guy who ran the 800 meters was sick. The coach came up to me.
“Do you think you can run the 800, too?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll try.”
Well, I started that thing, and oh boy. It was a real hot day, and by the end of the race I couldn’t even walk. They had to throw water on my face to get me moving. That was it for track.
Soccer also meant a whole lot of running, but there was one game where a big kid like me could really do all right: el remachado. This was a different thing all the way, more of a punishment than a game. You wanted to punish the other guy.
Everybody started in the middle, and then one guy threw a ball up in the air. You tried to get it, and if you did then you threw it at someone close to you. I mean, you gunned it.
The ball we made ourselves; we took a cigarette box, and then we put a rock inside some paper and wrapped the cigarette box around it. If that thing hit you, it hurt. The good thing was that we had a rule: you had to hit the guy from the waist down. Still, you could always miss and hit the guy in the back—or even on his head.
Remaches means “rivets” in English; when you played el remachado, and got hit, it felt like somebody was drilling a screw into you.
One day I went to a friend’s house. He had a banana tree, and we ate some bananas. Then we went and played el remachado. During the game, I picked up the ball, gunned it at him, and hit him in the back (my aim was off that day). He started throwing up and turned blue.
“Oh my God,” I thought. “I killed him.”
Luckily, he wasn’t hurt too bad. We stopped the game after that, and we stayed good friends. Most of the kids, we took care of each other. We grew up in the same area and we played all the time.
After a while I started focusing on baseball, which was my favorite sport anyway. This was the way it was with most of my friends, and most kids in Cuba. Baseball was like a religion in our country, and still is today. The first official game between two all-Cuban teams was played there in 1874, about ten years after students who learned it while attending college in the United States, as well as U.S. military men, started bringing baseball to the island. By the time I was coming up in the 1940s and ’50s there were pro teams that played in integrated leagues all through the winter and summer. Young kids started in the Juvenile League, which is like the Little League in the U.S., and progressed up from there onto amateur clubs with hopes of going pro.
When fans weren’t going to the ballpark, they listened to big-league games on the radio. Most of the broadcasts were Yankees games, so most Cubans became Yankees fans. I was too—sorry, Boston—and Mickey Mantle was my favorite player. Since there were a bunch of daily newspapers on the Island that carried box scores from the U.S., I could see how Mickey and dad’s old teammate Minnie Miñoso—who mostly played for the White Sox—were doing.
As kids we didn’t have fancy gloves, shoes, or equipment. A lot of times we didn’t even have a decent place to get a game going. At the good parks, people often wouldn’t let you play because they were afraid you would hit one of the little kids with a ball by mistake. We’d just find someplace else. There might be rocks in the field, or a hole in it, but we didn’t care. We would even play in the street.
Whatever it took, we were going to play. If we didn’t have a bat and ball, we’d get a cork, put some little nails into it, and then tape it up. Then we’d use a broomstick to hit it with. And if we could only get four or five guys to a side, we’d play a game called four corners. A guy would pitch the ball to you, you’d hit it with your hand, and then you’d run to a base. If the guy hit you in the leg with the ball before you reached base, you were out.
Because I was big, I started as a catcher. I didn’t have a chest protector or cup, just a mask and glove. One time when I was behind the plate, a guy hit a foul tip and it got me right in the privates. I hurt for a LONGGGG time. That was it for catching.
Next, I played some infield: third base and some first base, and even second and short. I liked every position they put me at, and I was a good hitter. But if your father was Luis Tiant, everyone expected you to become a pitcher. So eventually I tried it, and I was hooked. It was not long before I was on the mound most of the time.
I felt good on the mound because I was in control. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be the guy. Not just out there, but playing an important part in the game. When I went out and won, I knew I put part of my life out there. We didn’t just win because of this or that guy. I was part of that win.
My dad didn’t give me too many pitching lessons, but I must have picked up something from watching him because from the start people said my motion was similar to his with all the different movements and the shaking. They say he kicked his leg up a little bit like Juan Marichal would later on, but I don’t remember that from when I saw Dad play as a little kid—and he never taught it to me later.
What he did teach me was this: Don’t go starting anything you don’t think you can finish. I’ve carried that through all my life, on and off the field, up until now.
Once I got going in baseball, some of the guys who had played with my father started coming up to me.
“You’re pretty good,” they would say, “but your father was better.”
His friends said it too, but it didn’t bother me. I would just smile and say, “OK.” Honestly, I was proud to be mentioned alongside him. It meant I was doing all right.
My father never used to watch me pitch when I started out. Maybe it was because of how he felt about his own career. But his friends saw me, and they told him, “You better go see your boy. He’s getting good.”
I was fourteen or fifteen years old by then, playing on a team called the Buena Vista Social Club. We played in a ballpark in Buena Vista with a bus stop behind it—they called it the Route Twenty-Eight Stadium. The buses would stop across the street, and the pitcher’s mound looked straight through to the bus stop. I looked over one time from the back of the mound and saw my father getting off a bus. He hid behind one of the big columns at the bus stop and started watching me pitch.
He didn’t think I saw him, and I didn’t let on that I did.
After the game—which I won with a shutout—I looked over again and saw him coming across the avenue. He came up to me and shook my hand. Then he hugged me.
“You were good,” he said.
That meant the world to me, knowing that he liked what he saw. He had pitched as a pro for 20 years, so he knew a good pitcher when he saw one. It didn’t matter if I was his son, either; he was not the type to say nice things just to make me smile. He was tough, but also honest.
After that, he came to a lot of my games. I’d look over from the mound to the bus stop and he’d be standing there. He never actually went into the ballpark, even though it was wide open with free admission. Was he nervous? Superstitious? I never found out why.
When I got a little older, our team used to play under the lights a lot. The lights didn’t work that great, which caused problems. One time I was pitching at night and the catcher couldn’t handle me in the bad light. Every time I’d strike a guy out he’d make it to first base when the ball got by the catcher. So, he didn’t count as an out, and I’d have to face an extra guy. I wound up striking out six guys in one inning!
Finally, the boss of the league told me I couldn’t pitch anymore at night because I was going to hurt somebody. My coach put me back at third and first base for night games, until we changed to another park with better lights.
Once I was back to pitching days and nights, I started winning a lot. That was it; I never played another position again.
Word spread, and in 1957, when I was 16, I was selected to go to the World Series of Mexico. Cuba’s top amateur team played against the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the United States, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela. I needed my parents’ permission to make the trip, and I figured they would be excited about the opportunity.
I was half-right.
My mother, who always supported me, was OK with it. But not my father.
“You’re not going,” he said.
My mother jumped all over him.
“Why not?” she yelled. “This doesn’t happen all the time! It’s what he wants to do—let him play!”
Dad didn’t budge.
“Nah, nah, nah,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“But maybe it’s the last time he gets a chance to go somewhere like this,” Mom yelled back. “Let him go and compete and have a good time.”
He kept saying, “No, no, no,” but my mother fought hard.
Finally, Dad gave in and agreed to let me go. This was my first time out of the country, and my first time on a plane. It was a DC-7, a little Army transport plane with propellers. Because it was a cargo plane, there were no seats; the whole team just sat on the floor with our backs to the walls. All we needed were parachutes and we could have made a World War II movie.
Once we got out of that flying coffin, the trip was great. I pitched in some games, did well, and we almost won the whole tournament. But when I got back home I hurt my elbow. I went to the doctor, a Mexican guy living in Cuba. Somebody had told me he was good with sports injuries.
You know the ultrasound machines they have today? There was nothing like that back then. Every machine he had in his office looked like he had made it himself—like he was a mad scientist or something. He would rub this cream on my elbow, put it in a hot bowl, and then zap me with electricity. MANNNNN, it hurt. But it also seemed to work, at least at first. I went to him for two months, and felt better, but when I tried to pitch my elbow still bothered me.
Around this time, I met another doctor who wanted me to pitch for his team. I was very discouraged, and told him I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t throw without pain.
“No, you’ll be fine,” he said. “Come see me.”
So, I went to see him in the hospital. He told me, “Sit down, I’ll be right back.” When he came back he brought a tray with a huge needle on it. It was so big it was hanging off the tray, and it was real thick all the way around.
“OK,” he said, “Now I’m going to give you a cortisone shot.”
I knew nothing about cortisone shots, but I knew I didn’t want any part of that needle. He put some cream on my elbow, and then he left the room for a while to give it time to take before the shot.
This was my chance.
BOOM! I jumped up, ran out the door, and took off down the hall. He came running after me, but he didn’t catch me because I was thinking about that needle.
My arm was still numb, and I knew I was going to have to go back there eventually. So, I called him up.
“What are you, chicken?” he said.
“Yeah, I’m chicken!”
He said I could go back the next day, and I did—and then he got me with that needle. Oh man... that hurt. The thing is, he kept moving the needle around, and that hurt more. And after he finished, he told me I had to keep throwing.
“Doctor,” I said, “how do you expect me to throw when I can’t even bend my arm?”
I couldn’t even stretch it out; my arm felt like it had a piece of wood in it.
“You’ve just got to stretch out and throw,” he said.
“Doctor, I’m not doing anything.”
I had to go to him another time, and he put in another needle. After that shot, he told me to take it easy for a few weeks and then throw. I kept working it out and working it out, stretching my arm, and over time the pain in my elbow went away.
It never bothered me again, either, but I didn’t pitch for the doctor’s team. I didn’t think he had been fair to me, pushing me to throw when I was still in pain. He was thinking more about his team than my health.
That’s what happened in 1959. After coming back from my elbow injury, I had another good year in the Juvenile League in ’58. Now I wanted to try out for the most respected of all Cuban teams: the Havana Sugar Kings.
Owned by a huge sugar plantation owner, the Sugar Kings were part of the Cuban Winter League. The league had four teams—Almendares, Cienfuegos, Havana, and Marianao—that played as many as five games a week. Most games were in the Gran Estadio de La Habana, a wonderful ballpark in Havana. The talent in the league was terrific; all the best native players, plus major league stars like Willie Mays and Jim Bunning who were looking to stay sharp and in shape during their off-season. Many great Negro League players like Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge, and my dad had also played there through the years.
This was Cuban baseball at its best—and most colorful. Steve Fainaru and Ray Sanchez describe the era perfectly in their book, The Duke of Havana:
“Before the revolution, baseball in Cuba, particularly in Havana, was played with an intensity found only in New York before the Dodgers and Giants moved west. The range of the sport may have been unrivaled. The sport was as colorful as the culture in which it thrived. This was back when the mob ran Havana and there were numbers runners on every street corner. Gambling was encouraged at the ballpark. The bookies were like hot-dog vendors. As [Almendares pitcher Max] Lanier ran off the field about beating the Havana Reds in the famous 1947 Cuban League finals, the bettors mobbed him, stuffing dollars into his uniform as if he were a stripper exiting the runway. By the time he reached the clubhouse he was $1,500 richer.”
Great baseball, great fans, and great money? I wanted a part of that.
By the time I was coming up, the Sugar Kings also played during the summer in the International League, competing with pro teams from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The Sugar Kings had become a Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Senators, a major-league club. So, if I signed with Havana, I would be just one step away from the majors—with a chance to either make it to Washington or get seen by a scout from another big-league team and hope for a trade. Cuban pitchers Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos had been signed by the Senators a few years before, and were now in the big leagues facing Mantle and Miñoso.
My father came with me to the Havana tryouts in the spring of 1959, but I didn’t make the Sugar Kings. Later, an official from the Senators told my father what he thought of my talent:
“Señor Tiant, your boy will never make it. He should accept that now, and maybe get a job in the fruit market as a salesman.”
Before this, I didn’t understand why my father was so against my playing in that Mexico tournament back in ’57. He played, I’d think to myself, so how come he doesn’t want me to play?
Now I was starting to get it.
Despite being a great pitcher, he never got a chance to play in the major leagues. He had to deal with racism for all those years in the U.S., and he didn’t want me to go through what he went through. Even if times were changing, and there were Black players in the majors, there was still plenty of racism there too. Plus, the big-league owners controlled everything in baseball; no-trade clauses, multiyear contracts, and free agency were way, way in the future. You could get cut or traded at any time. Just like what happened to him.
That’s why he didn’t want me to play. He wanted me to go to school and get an education so I could be the one in control. Maybe become a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Not follow the same path as him, which led to pain and disappointment.
Only it wasn’t that easy. Like him, I loved the game. I loved the feeling of being out on that mound. To me, that was control. And when another chance came, if it did, I was going to take it.