Posted on 03/25/2016 10:33:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the back of a shed in his run-down Miami neighborhood, where he can see it every time he gets his rusty old lawn mower chugging away, there's a poster of Rene Arocha when he was young, when in 1993 he set the whole baseball world on its ear.
That was when he wasn't a star of the diamond but just another defector from communism. That was a time when not just our best baseball players but ballerinas, cellists, dancers and nearly every other great American ensemble consisted of refugees from the old Soviet Union or one of its equally oppressive satellites. Rene Arocha joined the star-studded exodus July 10, 1991, by walking out of a hotel side door and requesting diplomatic asylum in this land of the free and mother of exiles. He didn't have any luggage with him, but he did have a 92-mile-an-hour fastball and lots of relatives in Miami, and that was more than enough.
Of course he was denounced as a traitor to the glorious revolution of the proletariat, but with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist "Republics," all that changed, and both he and Cuba entered a new and better world. What surprised him most about this country was how everybody could criticize its leader -- without needing to whisper.
Rene Arocha was soon assigned to the old St. Louis Cardinals, whose games many an American followed first on radio and then on television. Those were the days -- and static-filled nights. There is something about departed glory that never departs.
When he takes his 17-foot boat out into the Gulf of Mexico, he knows that it's considered smuggling to bring fleeing Cubans on board, but it's OK to throw some food and water over the side so that this year's crop of refugees can survive long enough for the U.S. Coast Guard to rescue them. Those of us with roots as immigrants -- legal, illegal or otherwise -- never forget our roots. No matter how many Castros or Trumps arise and do their best, or rather worst, to kill the unkillable American Dream.
Arocha was a pitcher who never lived up to his promise. It’s really too bad.
Trump = Hitler didn’t work as well as expected. So now, the GOPe, neocons and RATs are saying Trump = Castro.
Ill go out on a limb and say that won’t work either.
Funny how the authors, poets, musicians, singers, and sports figures of this country, that never miss the opportunity to praise Cuba, never acknowledge that it is the authors, poets, musicians, singers, and sports figures of Cuba who are defecting. I wonder why that is?
In Puerto Rico we have a joke about communist Cuba.
Two street dogs in P.R. are complaining about how bad they have it. One says to the other, “I’m off to Cuba, in Cuba all dogs have a warm dry place to sleep, are fed well, and have excellent veterinary care.”
A few months later the dog returns to P.R. and sees his old friend who asks him, “Is it true that in Cuba all dogs have a warm dry place to sleep, are fed well, and have excellent veterinary care?”
“Yes, it’s all true”
“Then why have you returned?”
“Because in Cuba, you are not allowed to bark.”
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