I love you, Miami!
Livan Hernandez
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–I also chose to leave, right? –Edgar Hernández (45) tells me.
And he tells me about his twin sons, Omar and Frank, both 21 years old, both with contracts in the United States minor league.
Edgar Hernández had chosen to leave in January 2008.
He lived in Havana, in the Playa neighborhood.
–He lived a kilometer from Javier Sotomayor and Iván Pedroso. They were my neighbors – he tells me.
(Athletics lover will remember both Sotomayor and Pedroso; the former still holds the world record for the high jump and the latter won nine world titles in the long jump).
Edgar Hernández had studied Sports Physiotherapy, but in Havana he was not progressing. The country was not growing, it was under the embargo, Edgar Hernández was not growing either. He spoke with his wife, María de la Caridad, they made an agreement. The twins were six years old, they stayed in Cuba with their mother. Edgar Hernández got on the plane in January 2008, heading to Viladecans. He flew with a work contract in his suitcase.
I was going to be a gardener.
He had also been a baseball player, he had it in his DNA, and he would end up inoculating it to the children: the family, the four of them, reunited definitively in 2013. All of them, in their new apartment in Viladecans.
Viladecans, the birthplace of baseball in our country, just as the neighboring Sant Boi is the birthplace of rugby.
(...)
Now I am in the apartment, in Viladecans, talking with Edgar Hernández.
Frank nods at me as he crosses the room. He carries a towel on his shoulder. He goes to the gym.
–The boy is going to the gym –the father emphasizes to me–: this is his life.
(In a few weeks, Frank goes to the United States, he rejoins the discipline of his team, the Chicago Cubs; I am not going to see Omar: he is already there, concentrated with the Kansas City Royals).
They are both baseball professionals.
It hasn't always been like this, of course.
When they were very young, the twins wanted to play soccer. That's what it's like to be a kid in Spain.
–The thing is that football is expensive, or it caught us far from home. I didn't find a club that would give me a price for the two kids. And when I found him, he was in Sant Vicenç dels Horts. And you had to take them three times a week. That couldn't be...
–And baseball was easier?
–To begin with, I had played for Viladecans. And he helped train the boys. I brought them to the club, and that's it.
With the change, everyone won.
Above all, baseball won.
It turns out that the twins were wonderful baseball players. They immediately stood out as the best defenders in the tournaments. In youth (14 years old) they already played for the Spanish team. In 2018 they excelled at the Youth European Championship in Italy.
A scout for the Kansas City Royals noticed Omar Hernández. He noticed and wanted it. He put a contract on the table. The family signed it, how could they not? The following year, the Chicago Cubs took the twin, Frank, the boy who greeted me as he left for the gym.
Both play in the minor league, waiting to jump to the MLB, Major League Baseball.
If they make it...
(Meanwhile, both achieved titles for Spain: in October they were proclaimed European champions in the Czech Republic; Omar Hernández was the tournament's top scorer in home runs and runs).
–And how do you experience your absences? –I ask Edgar Hernández.
He shrugs.
It brings me to the phrase that opens the portrait.
–I also chose to leave, right? How am I going to cut their wings? I miss them but my wife and I are strong and they are happy. And they earn a salary and can save because they have housing and food covered. They are autonomous.
-And what do you do? –I ask him.
–Can I offer you a crown? –She answers me.
And I nod and he tells me that he is the coach of the Spanish youth team and also works at the airport, in ACL logistics.
And I uncover the Crown and close the notebook and we travel to Cuba, the land of the Germans of the Caribbean, with its beauty and its miseries.
(The Germans from the Caribbean, for their efficiency, is how my father, who is Dominican, describes them).
