By BUSTER OLNEY
New York Times
August 13, 1998
NEW YORK -- Orlando Hernandez won his second major league start June 9, beating Montreal, 11-1, the first affirmation of his ability, a showcase of his various arm angles and pitch speeds. Hernandez returned to the visitors' clubhouse in Olympic Stadium, sat in a chair at his locker, his back turned to his teammates, and he began to cry.
Nobody was quite sure what to say, Jose Cardenal remembers, and few understood why Hernandez was crying. Cardenal, the New York Yankees' first-base coach, quietly explained it to manager Joe Torre and others: Hernandez, who defected from Cuba last December, badly misses his two children, 7-year-old Yahumara and 2-year-old Steffi, girls born during Hernandez's first marriage. He wishes they could be in the United States with him, wishes they could see him in his new life.
"It's very hard for him," said Cardenal, who, like Hernandez, is a native of Cuba. "He loves his family, and there is nothing he can do."
Hernandez, scheduled to start against Texas on Thursday, is expressive and gregarious, reaching up to tap an acquaintance on the shoulder when he passes, a greeting in any language. Even when speaking Spanish through an interpreter, Hernandez will look his questioner directly in the eye, generally punctuating his answers with a smile.
But when Cardenal first interpreted a question Wednesday about Hernandez's two daughters, the pitcher turned his body to the left, looked down, his run-on answers reduced to a single sentence or even a word or two. Hernandez said he speaks to his daughters by telephone as often as he can. He tries not to dream about them, or think about the situation. Being away from them is very hard. Yahumara was named after a dear friend, he explained. Steffi was named after the tennis player Steffi Graf.
Hernandez's face brightened when he was asked about their personalities. Yahumara is quiet, he said, like most children her age. Steffi is "a fireball," Cardenal said, interpreting. "She doesn't like to take orders."
So, Steffi's favorite word is "No"?
"Si," Hernandez said. His smile was brief. And then he was off to work out.
Cardenal watched him leave. "He says to me all the time how much he misses them," he said. "I really feel sad for him, because I know how much he loves his kids."
Cardenal probably has more perspective on Hernandez's situation than anyone on the team. Cardenal left Cuba nearly 40 years ago to play baseball on a work visa, after Fidel Castro took control in Cuba but before the doors between the United States and Cuba closed. He did not see his parents for 19 years, or any of his siblings, remembering them all that time.
When he returned to Cuba for a visit in 1979, both of his parents were much older; his father, Felipe, who had been strong and healthy when Cardenal first left, was blind. His mother was also ill. Five years later, Cardenal went back to Cuba for the funeral of his father, whom he had barely seen through the last years of his father's life.
The few visits he has had to Cuba have left Cardenal more saddened than anything; there is never enough time to get reacquainted with family and friends, only to say hello and goodbye. "It was very hard for me to cope with, and for him, it's worse," Cardenal said of Hernandez. "I can go back to the country, because when I left, I left legally. I can go back to Cuba. But his position is much more difficult, because he left because of politics."
Hernandez's younger brother Livan pitches for the Florida Marlins, and there are branches of family and friends from Cuba he could come to know. But Cardenal wonders how Hernandez will cope during the off season, when there will be no baseball to distract him from the thoughts and memories of his daughters.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company