Cuban Baseball Stars Can Enter U.S. Half-Brother Of Marlins Pitcher Is One Of Two Players To Get Ok

Cuban pitcher Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, his wife and another baseball player, who escaped from Cuba on a small boat, were cleared by the State Department Wednesday to enter the United States.

The three Cubans were in a group of eight who escaped from Cuba in a small boat and were being held in the Bahamas while U.S. officials considered their request for asylum.

The State Department said late Wednesday that Hernandez, a star pitcher on the Cuban National Team and the half-brother of World Series MVP Livan Hernandez, could enter the United States along with his wife, Noris, and another baseball player, Alberto Hernandez Perez. The other five Cubans will remain in the custody of Bahamian immigration authorities, Foley said.

Agency spokesman James Foley said the two baseball players had been banned for life from baseball in Cuba after helping Livan Hernandez defect in 1995, depriving them of their livelihoods and subjecting them to harassment.

He said the State Department was confident that Bahamian authorities would carefully consider any claims for protection and ensure that no bona fide refugee is returned to Cuba.

Foley reiterated that the United States is still committed to migration accords signed with Cuba that promote safe, legal and orderly migration.

During his banishment from baseball in Cuba, Orlando Hernandez toiled as a physical therapist in a mental hospital for less than $10 a month. Livan, meanwhile, was finding his fortune in Miami with the Florida Marlins.

Now, scouts from major league baseball teams will probably line up to see the latest Hernandez, who was regarded as the top pitcher on the communist island with a 129-47 lifetime record and a 90 mph fastball. But at 28, he is not the hot prospect he would have been a few years ago.

Hernadez’s daughters remained in Havana with their mother, Hernandez’s ex-wife.

“My daughters didn’t know I was coming. But they have to see me play baseball,” Hernandez said at a news conference earlier Wednesday at the Bahamian immigration headquarters. “They are the children of an athlete, and they have to see me play ball.”

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