The Cuban baseball player Randy Arozarena He has character, and he has demonstrated it throughout his career, as he recently said in an interview for the magazine GQ, what considered him one of the “Men of the Year” in Mexico.
“As the eldest son, at 19 years old, I had to become a father to my brothers. I felt like I was going to risk my life for my family,” Arozarena said when recounting the death of his father when he was still a young prospect in Cuba.
However, getting there was not an easy path for the boy born in Arroyos de Mantua, a fishing town of 3,500 inhabitants in the northwest of Cuba. Arozarena began his love for sports by playing soccer “in the outfield of the baseball field.”
“One day the baseball coach asked the soccer coach to make his selection. I was one of them and since I was little I started playing well. “I represented my little town, then my municipality and my province,” said the star who, at that time, was beginning to play ball “without shoes, sometimes they lent me the gloves.”
At the age of 12 he began his training as a baseball player. At 19, during the playoffs, “I lost my dad… he went to see me play that day, and while he was in the stands he died.” It was after that hard blow that Arozarena felt the weight of responsibility.
“That's my first moment of being aware that I was really taking a chance. And it was then that I escaped from Cuba,” he told GQ the ballplayer Randy knew that Arroyos de Mantua was one of the main departure points for those who decide to take to the sea towards Mexico. And he made the decision to do it for the good of his family.
The young Arozarena knew that the State Security He had him under his sights, that they knew of his intentions to leave the country, and he saw how the coaches stopped calling him up for international matches. And the initial decision turned into determination.
“We went to the mountains hiding from the police and got on the boat. I left at three in the morning and, little by little, the conditions became worse. Despite that, I fell asleep for a long time. My arm was literally touching the water and there were waves of about five meters. The front of the boat broke and you felt like any wave could throw you off the boat. It was bad. Nine hours later, at 12 noon, I arrived at Isla Mujeres and there began my new story in Mexico,” said Arozarena, remembering the day of the crossing.
However, not everything was going to be easy from now on, and the Cuban player would encounter new obstacles in his path. The nightlife in Mérida played tricks on him. “While I was playing in the Meridian League – a semi-professional tournament – I went to clubs and then played. I realized that wasn't going to get me anywhere. “I came to Mexico with one goal: to help my family.”
He then asked to be transferred to Tijuana, a place he had heard was dangerous to go out at night. The self-imposed lockdown worked. In 2018 he was the leader of the Northern League of Mexico with 19 home runs and scored 49 runs. A year later he was invited by the St. Louis Cardinals to their spring training and that same year there was a brief debut that ended months later.
“In January 2020, when I was traded from St. Louis to the Tampa Bay Rays, I said: 'I'm no good for anything.' Knowing the quality you have, you say 'damn, how are they going to get me out?' But then I decided to turn forward. I made a great spring training in Tampa and I felt very well, but Covid-19 arrived”… and Arozarena tested positive.
After returning to normal, he hit seven home runs in a month, enough for the Tampa team to get a ticket to be in the playoffs. There his story as a baseball player definitively changed. In the 2020 postseason he broke the records for hits, home runs, bases traveled and was named rookie of the year. With his actions he helped his team gain access to the World Series.
One of those now considered “Men of the Year” in Mexico needed one more feat to seal his greatness and he signed it on February 12, 2021, dressed in the green flannel and the cap of the Aztec team.
“I'm going to ask all my followers a favor. Send a message to the president to give me my nationality, to do me that favor to represent Mexico in the World Classic. That's the only thing I want," Arozarena said on his social networks. sending a message to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The rest is already known history. The boy from Arroyos de Mantua played with the colors of Mexico, a country that he is grateful for having welcomed him after a sea voyage, fleeing the Cuban regime with the impulse to risk his life for his family.
In October 2021, Arozarena publicly demanded Freedom for the people of Cuba in an emotional and brief message on their social networks.
"My people from my Cuba Libre, the Homeland where I was born from where I had to emigrate to fight and achieve my dreams and a better future for mine... Always in my heart... FREEDOM TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE!"
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