Suffice it to say, Orlando Hernández faced some heavy challenges in his life before coming to America to become a reliable MLB player and four-time World Series winner. Hernández defected Cuba in 1997 after becoming one of the most dominant pitchers in the country.
The details of his defection are hard to hear. He boarded a boat on Christmas Day in 1997. As the story has been told, he and others went from Cuba to Anguilla Cay on a 30-foot fishing boat after attending a wedding earlier in the day. A small transfer boat was supposed to take them the rest of the way, but it never showed, and he and the others had to survive on minimal food and with makeshift shelter for days before a helicopter spotted them. A boat finally showed, but took them to the Bahamas and were detained, not America where they intended to go. To make a long story short, Hernández was able to gain some press thanks in part to his brother's status as a pitcher in America and eventually got to America as a free man. The full story is wild, told well by Russ Speiller of SABR.
