The fallout in Cuba from Livan Hernandez’s defection was immediate: El Duque became one of the most politically radioactive citizens in the country. He was left off the 1996 Cuban Olympic team that would win the gold medal in Atlanta. “I don’t know why they’re doing this to me,” Duque said at the time. “I’ve had every opportunity in the world to defect and I never did… I don’t know why I have to pay for my brother’s sins.”

At first, Livan was able to send money home to family in Cuba to ease the burden. But soon after, Livan and the Marlins were issued a letter by the U.S. Treasury Department informing them that the player was violating the U.S. trade embargo. Livan turned to a courier, Juan Ignacio, to bring money back to the island. Ignacio, despite the immense risks involved, operated in Havana with all the subtlety of Ed McMahon delivering a Publisher’s Clearing House check; he was soon arrested, tried and convicted. The judge wrote, “The accused unscrupulously took advantage of our condition as an underdeveloped and blockaded nation, attacking the dignity and the capacity of resistance and loyalty of several of our acclaimed athletes.” Ignacio was also discovered with Venezuelan work visas for El Duque and another Cuban baseball player. For his crimes, Ignacio received 15 years in prison.

Through tears of grief and celebration, Duque watched on TV from his shack as his brother dropped to his knees, thumped his chest and screamed out, “I love you Miami!” El Duque decided he’d had enough. He asked for only one man: Joe Cubas.

The trouble was, by then, Cubas didn’t want the work. Livan had ditched Cubas for another agent (who also represented Jose Canseco) not long after the Marlins signing, and “El Gordo” was still furious. “Tell El Duque to go fuck himself,” Cubas responded. “He’ll fuck me the same way his brother did. Let the nigger drown.”

As El Duque’s life hit bottom, his great-uncle, Ocilio “Tio” Cruz, who lived in Miami, stepped up to the plate to bankroll and mastermind an escape. Tio had himself been a political prisoner back in Cuba—his entire youth had been wasted serving a 15-year sentence before he had fled to Miami during the massive Mariel boatlift of 1980. Tio was determined to save El Duque from a similar fate. Even before Livan’s escape, Tio had pleaded with El Duque to leave the island. “The biggest dream in my life is to watch you pitch in the major leagues,” Tio once told his grand-nephew. “You have the ability, son; you can make millions.” After Livan had successfully made the leap, Tio pushed harder. “They’re not going to let you out of Cuba.” Now, finally, Duque was listening. They would plot their escape by sea.

Taking care to avoid the intensified surveillance on the island, Duque located the name of a smuggler in Miami and instructed his uncle to track him down. After this arrangement fell through, Duque devised a new plan. He’d hire a boat inside Cuba to escape into international waters, then rendezvous with a second ship arriving from Florida, which would transport him safely to Miami. Tio began to work with someone nicknamed “El Argentino” to facilitate the operation. Argentino’s role was to be the liaison between Miami and Havana, delivering messages and money prior to the escape.

Just a few weeks later, in December of 1997, the Ministry of Interior summoned El Duque to their headquarters. He was notified that the government was aware of his efforts to defect and officially forbidden from entering the province of Santa Clara, home to the most convenient launch point off the island.

“You will never play baseball again,” a government agent promised. Duque was further advised he would be watched so closely that “the island will feel like it’s the size of a penny.”

“I’m going to play baseball again before I die,” El Duque replied. “Even if I have to play in Haiti.”

With El Duque’s life in Cuban society teetering between complete nonexistence and extreme claustrophobia, El Argentino arrived in Havana with $4,000 of Tio’s money.

Cubans have always been haunted by the sea. The distance between Key West and Havana is 106 miles, which might constitute one of the largest graveyards on Earth. The area is riddled with fatal dangers: the force of the Gulf Stream, incredibly volatile weather, and, of course, sharks. Estimates vary, but as many as 30 percent of those who have attempted to cross those waters have perished. In light of all this, the waves lapping against Cuba’s shore have long represented the bars of a prison cell as much as a gateway to freedom.

Finally, the perfect day El Duque had been waiting for arrived. After nearly 30 years of being banned by the state, Christmas had been reinstated, a goodwill gesture made by Fidel Castro in anticipation of the Pope’s visit. While El Comandante could find it in his heart to reinstate Santa Claus, he offered no pardon to the revolution’s most successful pitcher.

On Christmas evening, El Duque attended a wedding with his new girlfriend, Norita. Guests remember the couple behaving “serenely” before departing the party at 7pm. After nightfall, the pair joined four other would-be defectors (including two lesser-known baseball players). They all traveled down the National Highway to Caibarién, a drowsy fishing village five hours east of Havana. There, they met the boat’s captain Juan Carlos Romero and his wife Geidy (who were also leaving for good) and two shipmates, who planned to bring the boat back. Over the years Caibarién had become a mecca for rafters looking to take their lives into their own hands by crossing the straits. By dusk the streets were empty. The launch point was Conuco Cay, just outside town. Occasionally people were known to camp there; Duque and his companions, however, found it empty, nothing but palm trees and heavy grass running toward the beach. They were able to drive up to almost the edge of the shore, but to get on the boat, all of them had to wade into the water. When someone expressed second thoughts about the escape, Norita cut them off: “Better to drown than to turn back now.”

In a best-case scenario, the first leg of their journey would last 10 hours. Should anyone happen to notice them, they would claim to be on a routine fishing trip. When they spotted a Cuban Coast Guard cutter off in the distance, Duque’s boat pretended to look for fishing zones in the sea. After an hour of fake trolling, Juan Carlos, maneuvered the boat toward the Bahamas.

Just off Caibarién lies the Sabana Archipelago, a string of tiny islands that blocks the entrance to the open sea. Juan Carlos chose a narrow channel running between the islands, but because of a low tide, the boat struck bottom and became stuck. Only after the captain himself jumped into the water and got the hull loose was the boat able to safely navigate beyond the archipelago and past the critical 12-mile international limit. They headed north, outside of Cuban waters, into pristine weather at seven knots.

By this point, Duque had been hiding on the floor of the boiling cabin with all the other defectors for over four hours. They were horribly seasick. When Juan Carlos finally gave the all-clear, everyone leaned over the side and retched.

The plan was for El Argentino to meet El Duque’s boat at 5pm between Santaren and Nicholas Channels, not far from the uninhabited Bahamian island of Anguilla Cay. From there, Miami was only 70 miles away. One by one, the group of eight slid off the boat and waded toward the shores of Anguilla Cay. The shipmates needed to return to Cuba by nightfall to avoid suspicion. After everyone gathered on the beach had watched the fishing vessel slowly disappear, they looked over their provisions: cigarettes, two cans of Spam, ten pounds of sugar, and several gallons of drinking water. None of them could have guessed that not only was El Argentino’s boat nowhere near them—it hadn’t even left Miami.

arch 17, 1998 (St. Patrick’s Day)—a press conference to announce the greatest pitcher in modern Cuban history signing for $6.6 million over four years with the Yankees was held at Victor’s Café in Miami. The parking lot outside was crammed with news vans and television trucks whose endless power cables slithered past the six-foot tall replica of the Statue of Liberty in the heavily air-conditioned room.

After a delay, El Duque and his agent Joe Cubas walked into the room, with Duque’s great-uncle and girlfriend closely behind. Cubas and Duque approached the microphone and got an ovation before either could get a word out. Camera flashes blinded everyone on the podium.

A reporter asked Duque what it’s like trading one dictator (Fidel) for another (George Steinbrenner). Duque didn’t recognize the Yankees owner’s name and had to ask someone nearby to explain the question.

“There is no comparison,” Joe Cubas interjected. “Steinbrenner is a businessman. Fidel Castro is a traitor.”

Not long after, Cubas would giddily peddle the great story of Duque’s escape to major Hollywood studios. “We’re lining up Cuba Gooding Jr. as Orlando Hernandez and Antonio Banderas as Joe Cubas” he informed Sports Illustrated. “[Duque] won’t answer any questions about his trip… He’s saving it for the movie.”

Suddenly the side door of Victor’s Café opened and the room exploded into shouts and cheers. Livan Hernandez forced his way past reporters, negotiating the footing on the cables piled over the carpet, on his way to seeing his brother for the first time in two-and-a-half years. Duque’s mouth opened wide, but before he could say anything, Livan grabbed him close, taking his face into his hands while kissing his bald head. Livan smiled, “Hold on, don’t cry.” Duque could not hold on. He shook in his brother’s embrace, rubbing at his face as tears poured over his cheeks. “I can’t help it,” Duque blurted out to the room. Livan stared, frozen for a moment in disbelief that his brother was standing next to him. Duque was the last person Livan had seen in Cuba, and the first person to teach him the art of pitching.

“I’m one hundred percent happy,” Livan then shouted to the crowd. “They did an injustice to him in Cuba, an injustice they would’ve done to me if I’d stayed. So my first advice is… Don’t eat too much McDonald’s!”

The room laughed and pens scribbled furiously on notepads. For most in attendance, it was the perfect punchline for a snug-fitting narrative—brothers reunited, the American Dream triumphing over a Cuban nightmare. However, one reporter there, S.L. Price, would remember the moment differently.

“Mine is an unseemly standoff between head and heart, a logical mess. I applaud Duque’s escape, but I’d rather see him pitch in Havana…. I know what everyone knows: Cuba is the worst place on the globe to be an athlete today. But I’m sure I know something even stranger. It is also the best.”

“I remember changing planes in Miami after seeing [Duque],” Yankee scout Lin Garret later told Sports Illustrated, recalling the showcase Cubas would stage that February in Costa Rica. Representatives from nearly 20 Major League teams had flown over to get their first up-close look at Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez as a prospective big league pitcher. “A lot of scouts said they didn’t like him. They said he didn’t throw hard—he was eighty-eight to ninety-two miles per hour—they worried about his ability… They weren’t sure how old he was. But there was more to this guy…. No, this was a special type of person. The radar gun wasn’t going to tell you his story. That night I called up Mark Newman (New York’s vice president of player development) and said, ‘We’ve got to be in it. I don’t care if he’s twenty-eight or thirty-two or whatever.’”

When the New York Yankees signed El Duque, they imagined he would pitch his entire first year in Triple A. However, in early June, their ace David Cone got bit by his pet Jack Russell on his pitching hand. Hernandez got the call-up from Columbus and made his first start on June 3, 1998, barely five months after his Christmas Day escape.

El Duque was an immediate sensation, arriving in the Bronx fully formed in style and substance. He wore his navy blue socks unusually high, with his cap bent at the brim and tucked low over his eyes. His delivery combined a high Juan Marichal–like leg kick with a sharp tucking down of his head, so that his eyes were actually obscured by his front knee and broke contact with the batter and the plate mid-delivery. From this tightly wound coil, he rocked forward and unleashed a vast arsenal of angles, speeds and pitches: side-arm slurves, overhand changeups, three-quarter sliders—using misdirection and location to compensate for what he lacked in velocity. He fielded his position with supreme athleticism and unflappable calm, pouncing off the mound to turn slow rollers and tricky dribblers into routine outs. He allowed Tampa Bay only one run in seven innings and struck out seven to earn his first Major League victory.

During the postgame interview, Duque wiped tears from his eyes with his pitching hand while a translator spoke to the camera. He dedicated the game to his family still living in Cuba, his two daughters, Yahumara and Steffi, as well as his mother, Maria Julia, who still refused to change the calendar in her home from the day her son had left the island.

The Yankees were 60-20 by the Fourth of July and running away with the AL East. Whatever Duque’s age may have been, nobody questioned his dominance over right-handed hitters, who batted a miserable .144 against him. On August 13, Fidel Castro’s seventy-second birthday, Duque struck out 13 batters against the Texas Rangers. Later that week, he was featured in Sports Illustrated. “I always believed I would pitch again someday,” he told Tom Verducci. “But I didn’t think I would be in the big leagues this early. I dreamed this. But I’m not a fortune-teller. I also dreamed I would be president.” Verducci wrote that Duque was especially “jazzed” that his highlights were making ESPN, a channel he knew Fidel Castro frequently tuned in. “I hope he watches me and is pulling the hair out of his beard.”

The Yankees would go on to mount one of the greatest seasons in the history of baseball, compiling a record of 114-48. Duque’s regular season record was 12-4 with a 3.13 ERA, but his finest moment came in Game Four of the American League Championship Series, where he allowed only three hits and pitched seven shutout innings, helping the Yankees tie their series against the Cleveland Indians 2-2. Duque and the Yankees went on to sweep the World Series against the San Diego Padres, with Duque pitching seven masterful innings in Game Two, allowing only one run.

On the eve of the Yankees’ victory parade, Fidel Castro made a surprising gesture to his one-time protégé and former captive. Duque had written to New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor, asking if the church could intercede with the Cuban government to allow him to see his family. On Friday, October 23, with the Cuban government’s permission, Duque’s mother, ex-wife and two daughters arrived at Teterboro on George Steinbrenner’s private jet—just in time to join Duque and the team for the ticker-tape march up Broadway’s “Canyon of Heroes.”