Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
Even in an era brimming with colorful characters and exceptional hurlers, Luis Tiant stood out. The barrel-chested, mustachioed Cuban righty combined an assortment of exaggerated deliveries with a variety of arm angles and speeds that baffled hitters — and tantalized writers — over the course of a 19-year major league career (1964–82) and an affiliation with the game in one capacity or another that extended through the remainder of his life.
“The Cuban Dervish,” as Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite christened him in 1975, died last Tuesday at the age of 83. No cause of death was announced.
The son of a legendary left-hander colloquially known as Luis Tiant Sr., the younger Tiant was exiled from his home country in the wake of Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro’s travel restrictions, and separated from his family for 14 years. Against that backdrop of isolation, “El Tiante” went on to become the winningest Cuban-born pitcher in major league history, and to emerge as a larger-than-life character, so inseparable from his trademark cigars that he chomped them even in postgame showers. He spoke softly in a thick accent, but that didn’t prevent his wit and wisdom from getting across, particularly during the latter half of his career, after he emerged from a serious arm injury to become a top big-game pitcher.
“In boots, black cap, foot-long cigar and nothing else, he’d hold court with half-hour monologues Richard Pryor would envy,” wrote Thomas Boswell in 1988.
Tiant’s ascendence to iconic status centered around his 1971–78 run with the Red Sox, reaching its pinnacle in their seven-game 1975 World Series defeat, during which he made three starts: a brilliant Game 1 shutout; a gritty Game 4 complete game during which he delivered “163 pitches in 100 ways,” to use the description of Sports Illustrated‘s Roy Blount Jr.; and a valiant, draining Game 6 effort where he faltered late but was saved by Carlton Fisk’s famous body-English home run around Fenway Park’s left field foul pole in the 12th inning. The Red Sox lost Game 7, but that postseason cemented Tiant’s place within the cultural pantheon.
“Black-bearded and sinister, he looks like Pancho Villa after a tough week of looting and burning,” wrote Red Smith for the New York Times after Tiant held the three-time defending champion A’s to three hits and one unearned run in American League Championship Series opener. “He works without waste of time or motion, glowering briefly into the sun to take the catcher’s sign, pivoting on one leg to face center field, then wheeling back to deliver over the top. He is a master of every legal pitch and he never throws two consecutive pitches at the same speed.”
“Tiant is the Fred Astaire of baseball,” marveled Oakland’s Reggie Jackson after that same start. The Boston Globe‘s Peter Gammons called him “a hero of unmatched emotional majesty” after his Game 6 effort. The New Yorker’s Roger Angell catalogued “the full range of Tiantic mime” in “Agincourt and After,” perhaps the most well-loved dispatch of his 60-year career. His half-dozen descriptions take flight thusly: “(1) Call the Osteopath: In midpitch the man suffers an agonizing seizure in the central cervical region, which he attempts to fight off with a sharp backward twist of the head.”
Beyond the mythology was a master craftsman whose repertoire of four basic pitches (fastball, curve, slider, and changeup) combined with three angles (over-the-top, three-quarters, and sidearm) and six different speeds for the curve and change yielded 20 distinct offerings according to Fisk.
Before reaching the Red Sox, Tiant attained stardom during a six-season run with the then Indians (1964–69), during which he turned in his most dominant season in 1968, then his worst the year after. A brief stop with the Twins (1970) was marred by a fractured scapula, but led to his unlikely re-emergence with the Red Sox. Afterwards, he bounced around to the Yankees (1979–80), Pirates (’81), and Angels (’82) before returning to the Mexican League. For his career, he won 229 games and lost 172 with a 3.30 ERA (114 ERA+), 49 shutouts, and 2,416 strikeouts — excellent numbers but ones that have yet to convince Hall of Fame voters to grant him admission.
Luis Clemente Tiant y Vega was born November 23, 1940 in Marianao, Cuba, the only child of Luis Eleuterio Tiant and his wife, Isabel Vega Tiant. The senior Tiant (b. 1906, La Habana, Cuba) was an accomplished pitcher in his own right, a left-hander whose opportunity to play in the National or American Leagues was denied because of the color of his skin. Instead, in a professional career that spanned from 1926–48, he pitched in Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and the Negro Leagues, most notably starring for the New York Cubans, and pitching in East-West All-Star Games in 1935 and ’47. Listed at 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds, and nicknamed “Sir Skinny,” he was renowned for his corkscrew delivery and his screwball.
In 1935, he won two games facing the barnstorming Babe Ruth All-Stars, and held the Bambino to one hit. In 1947, his final season in the Negro National League, he went 9-0 with a 2.37 ERA in 79.2 innings for a Cubans team that won the Negro League World Series. The younger Tiant never saw his father play in the United States, but did watch him pitch in the Cuban Winter League and against barnstorming major league teams. Stateside, the elder Tiant encountered the racism and bigotry — not to mention the wearying travel — of his Negro Leagues compatriots.
As his son got older and displayed talent of his own, the father discouraged him from going to the U.S., saying, “I didn’t want him to be persecuted and spit on and treated like garbage like I was.” But Tiant’s mother championed her son’s nascent career. As a 16-year-old, he traveled to Mexico City to play in an international tournament, and at 18, in 1959, he tried out for the Havana Sugar Kings, an International League affiliate of the Reds. He missed the cut, but former All-Star second baseman-turned-scout Bobby Avila instead signed him for the Mexico City Tigers of the Mexican League. Tiant struggled his first year (5-19, 5.92 ERA) but improved in each of his next two seasons, returning to Havana to play winter ball.
Politics soon interfered with his career. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, Castro’s crackdown prevented the 21-year-old Tiant from reporting to Mexico City until May 25. On August 12, 1961, he married Maria del Refugio Navarro, whom he planned to take to meet his parents in Cuba in September before honeymooning, until his father wrote a letter to his son: “Don’t come home… Castro is not going to allow any more professional sports here — no baseball or boxing. If you do come home, I don’t think you’ll be able to get out again. They are not letting many people leave the island, especially young men of military age. Just make a life in Mexico for you and your family. I’ll let you know when you can come home.”
“He knew how much baseball meant to me, as it had to him, and he wanted me to reach the top — no matter what,” recalled the younger Tiant in 2019. Though briefly visited by his mother in Mexico City in 1968 while his father was jailed in Cuba in order to assure her return, it would take another seven years to reunite with both parents.
While Castro shut down the Cuban Winter League and began nationalizing the sport, Tiant instead spent the winter pitching in Puerto Rico, where he caught the eye of Julio “Monchy” de Arco, a Cuban League executive who additionally scouted for Cleveland. The team purchased Tiant’s contract from Mexico City for $25,000, but the pitcher didn’t get a dime. He spent the next three seasons in the minors, improving at every stop but encountering racism, segregation, and the language barrier, particularly while pitching for teams in Charleston, West Virginia in 1962 and Burlington, North Carolina in ’63.
