What flooded over me was what flooded over a lot of Miami, which is, my parents struggled and sacrificed so that I would never have to struggle and sacrifice. What flooded over me was just hugely personal. Seeing that at the height of sports.
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I’ve never loved watching an athlete play more than I loved watching Orlando ‘El Duque’ Hernandez pitch.
If I had to pick a team made up of Yankees from my lifetime, plucking them out of history to play a one game playoff with my life on the line, my starting pitcher would be a 32 or 33-year-old El Duque. I don’t even need to weigh my options — I wouldn’t pick Pettite, CC, Cone, Mussina, or Wells.
In ’98 and ’99, over the course of six postseason starts, El Duque pitched 44 innings, had 40 k’s, allowed only 24 hits and 19 walks, and had an era of 1.02. He was simply dominant in big games. His control was remarkable, his blood was ice cold, and his stuff got nastier as the stakes got higher.
And along with pure pitching, he also dictated the energy on the field. When people refer to an electric atmosphere for a game, big games he started were the epitome of the phrase. He gave the opposing team fits, but he impacted the Yankees top to bottom as well. When he started, it effected the lineup, the defense and the fans. He owned Yankee Stadium.
Even Yankee fans had to feel a modicum of pity for the opposing team. If El Duque was on the mound, he was in your head, especially in big games. He went at least 7 innings in every postseason start he made over those two years, and if the other team survived that, Mike Stanton and Mariano Rivera were waiting in the bullpen.
Bonus: he fielded his position as well as any pitcher I’ve ever seen.
Long story short, I love Orlando Hernandez.
Brothers in Exile is the ESPN ’30 for 30′ documentary about El Duque and his half brother Livan. Both men defected from Cuba to play baseball in the United States — a 20-year-old Livan first in 1995, then a 32-year-old El Duque two years later.
Their stories began in poverty, playing baseball in the face of intense scrutiny and political persecution, but both men eventually came to make millions of dollars to play in the US. With no shortage of postseason heroics, each carved his place among the best in the game for a time. An impressive feat for El Duque, who was already 32 when he arrived in the States.
ESPN knows what they’re doing with their 30 for 30 docs. They continue to release slickly produced, perfectly paced, engaging documentaries on a variety of sports subjects. Brothers in Exile is no exception. They take a remarkable story and tell it well.
I felt waves of nostalgia watching the footage of El Duque, and while I already knew much of his story, the added details in this documentary only more firmly solidified his place among my favorite athletes of all time.
If you have a spare 78 minutes and an ESPN+ subscription, you should check this one out.
Up Next: Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, it’s the second of two musicals I’ll be watching during this 30 day marathon.
