While watching Cubans in title game Oropesa has no regrets

Posted on Tue, Mar. 21, 2006
In My Opinion

While watching Cubans in title game, Oropesa has no regrets
By LINDA ROBERTSON
lrobertson@miamiherald.com

Eddie Oropesa sat in his comfortable West Kendall home, with his trio of
cars in the driveway, his wife, kids and parents in the family room and
his Major League Baseball mementos on the bookshelf, and he pondered
where he might have been instead.

If not for a leap of faith he took 13 years ago, he might have been in
San Diego on Monday night, wearing a red uniform with a Cuban flag
stitched on the sleeve, playing against Japan in the World Baseball
Classic championship game.

But Oropesa dismissed the thought with a wave of his big left hand over
his bald head. He taught himself long ago not to look back or forward,
but to live in the here and now. Otherwise, he never would have been
able to climb that outfield fence in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and jump to
the other side.

He was a 21-year-old pitcher for the Cuban national team in 1993 when he
slipped off his spikes, scrambled over the wall and ran through a
parking lot yelling ''Asylum! Asylum!'' as his teammates called out,
``Eddie, are you crazy?''

He had decided to defect, to become a traitor and an exile and a
professional baseball player and an American. It was a complicated stew
of feelings in his gut then, and it was the same Monday as he watched
his former team lose 10-6 to Japan in the title game.

He didn't feel pride, exactly. He's cynical about how Fidel Castro uses
the baseball team as a propaganda tool. Nor did he feel hatred. He knows
the Cuban people, shown on TV cheering from Havana's Parque Central,
deserve to indulge their love for baseball.

Maybe sympathy would be the right word. He identifies with the Cuban
players, who were playing in the stadium where he was the Opening Day
winner for the Padres in 2004. There they were, before a major-league
audience, competing against major-league opponents, yet they will be
back in isolation today, a hidden treasure on a forbidden island, 90
miles by boat or raft, but a million miles in their dreams from the
nation of Major League Baseball.

They'll be playing, as they have declared for almost half a century,
``for the love of the people rather than love of money.''

Oropesa knows it isn't that simple or noble.

Defecting -- the logistics of sneaking away -- is easy. Almost 100 Cuban
players have done it since Rene Arocha defected in Miami in 1991. But
saying goodbye is not.

''I've been there,'' Oropesa said, who was the third Cuban to defect.
``They are torn, because they would have to leave their whole lives
behind. On the other hand, they can't help feeling the pull of freedom
and opportunity. I feel bad for them, but I feel worse for Cubans who
have to leave on inner tubes.''

During the past two weeks, the Cubans have been tempted by the plenty
they've seen in the cities they've visited. They know their stock has
risen in the eyes of pro scouts. But no one has defected. They are under
pressure. If the players stay in the U.S., their relatives would be
subjected to ruin in Cuba.

After Oropesa defected during the World University Games, his parents
and his wife, Rita, lost their jobs. He didn't hold his first-born son
until Eddie Jr. was 3 years old.

''I was punished,'' Oropesa said. ``It's a difficult personal decision
to start over. Cuba is 40 years behind, so coming here was like coming
to another world. But I didn't want my children to grow up in a country
with no hope.

'Guys from the Cuban team called, and I told them, `The determination
has to be deep within yourself.' I know I would do it again.''

Oropesa had $60 and his uniform as he headed to Miami with an uncle 13
years ago. He spread that very same jersey across his dining room table
Monday. It is covered with the autographs of Cuban baseball players who
have signed it clandestinely over the years, whenever Oropesa or his
agent handed it to them. He also has his old Matanzas uniform, and on it
is the faded footprint of his baby boy. Rita sent it to him as he toiled
in the minor leagues.

'It's not the Cubans' fault they have to wear that uniform,'' Oropesa
said. ``The uniform you wear is the one you defend as an athlete. The
difference is that in the United States, you're not wearing the uniform
of the Republicans or the Democrats. But in Cuba, you're wearing the
uniform of communism.''

Oropesa, 34 and a free agent, became an American citizen in 2003. He has
no desire to return to Cuba until it is a democratic nation.

Don't most of us spend our lives trying to get back home, at least
subconsciously? Isn't getting back home the object of baseball?

Yet Cuban exiles can't go home. It doesn't exist anymore. They are stuck
in a suspended state of longing.

Oropesa's sense of homelessness was acute during the WBC, because he was
not allowed to play for Cuba.

''We couldn't play for our native country, like [Dominican] David Ortiz
or [Puerto Rican] Carlos Delgado did,'' he said. ``We were in limbo. We
had no voice. We could only sit and watch.''

Nor did he derive any satisfaction from the unexpected success of the
Cuban team, the only one without a single professional player on the roster.

''In the end,'' he said, ``The only one who wins is Fidel.''

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