Son of Havana: A Baseball Journey from Cuba to the Big Leagues and Back

The improbable story of Luis Tiant―a living link to the earliest days of Fidel Castro’s regime, a Boston Red Sox legend, and the most qualified 20th Century pitcher not yet enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame Luis Tiant is one of the most charismatic and accomplished players in the history of the Boston Red Sox and all of Major League Baseball―a cigar-chomping maestro who was the heart and soul of Boston’s title-contending teams in the 1970s. In his white polyester uniform, with a barrel-chested physique and a Fu Manchu mustache, Tiant may not have looked like the lean, sculpted aces he usually faced off against, but nobody was a tougher competitor on the diamond, and few were as successful. There may be no more qualified 20th-century pitcher not yet enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His big-league dreams came at a steep price―racism in the Deep South and the Boston suburbs, and nearly fifteen years separated from a family held captive in Castro’s Cuba. But baseball also delivered World Series stardom and a heroic return to his island home after close to a half-century of forced exile. The man whose name―"El Tiante"―became a Fenway Park battle cry has never fully shared his tale in his own words, until now. In Son of Havana, Tiant puts his huge heart on his sleeve and describes his road from fields strewn with rocks and rubbish in Havana to the pristine lawns of major league ballparks.