In Cuba, before he made the government's hit list, he was the island's most acclaimed pitcher, a powerhouse left to languish in the shadows cast by the defections of several baseball stars.

But on this side, he was simply opportune context for a sexier story. El Duque's suspension and harassment provided that surreal backdrop for the too-incredible tale of his half-brother, Marlins pitcher Livan Hernandez.

El Duque's humble existence lent that Third World juxtaposition to his brother's shimmering American dream. El Duque was the brother who made 10 bucks a month while Miami's new star cruised exile in a yellow Ferrari. He existed in a generic shade of gray, in a single dimension from which he emerged only long enough to adequately texture the account of the World Series' Most Valuable Player.

And they say the brother is a better pitcher, went the tag line in random World Series conversations.

But El Duque didn't exist on this side in real terms. People didn't hold him up for what he was, a representative of a greater Cuban heartache. They didn't recognize in him the reflection of Cuba's sprawling wound. They didn't see beyond the Livan connection.

At an arm's distance, they took him to be Livan's unfortunate foil. After all, somebody had to be the pauper in the prince's tale. And they treated him with fleeting sympathy, just as they would have treated Livan had he been the one stuck back on the island.

And then El Duque, the unbending refugee, was born. He escaped Cuba on Dec. 26 with seven others aboard a leaky boat. After a nightmarish day at sea, the refugees landed on a deserted cay and endured three days with scarce provisions. They were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to the Bahamas, where they were detained.

In the general refugee population, El Duque's group stood out for its baseball luminaries, the pitcher and his friend Alberto Hernandez, who was the starting catcher on Cuba's gold-medal-winning national team. And that edge of celebrity won rare U.S. visas for both athletes and Duque's girlfriend, Noris Bosch.

Through it all, Duque seemed to command his own show. He refused the United States' offer of asylum. He said he wouldn't leave behind the five who were rejected.

Out of Cuba, El Duque had messed up the delicate balance of all the intersecting themes. Some took him for an ingrate when he chose to reside in Costa Rica. He was an opportunist holding out for a better contract in a third country. He was the perennial sad example of the arbitrary distribution of humanitarian visas.

Once again, the most powerful statement was lost in the waves.

On the same day El Duque's boat left Cuba, another leaky vessel sailed from the island carrying nine Cubans. But that boat sank in heavy seas. One man, the only believed survivor, was picked up by the Cuban coast guard. He told Cuban radio he had recovered the body of his 21-year-old cousin.

Her name was Isora Mendez Broche. We never saw her face on the news. We didn't have a chance to debate the merits of her political-asylum pleas. But if we listen closely, we may recognize her dreams in the story of a man who crossed those same straits.

``The people who mean nothing to the Cuban government when we're there should mean nothing to them now that we're gone,'' El Duque told reporters in Nassau. ``They've told us we are nobodies. We're going to demonstrate to them that we are somebody.''

It is a message to be pitched to the world at 90 mph, directed at those who cling to the individual, the occasional, the opportune. There are leagues of others like El Duque suffering in gray. And they have names and faces and stories, even though we don't always get to hear them.