Fidel Castro will be forever linked to baseball - Newsday

[TomSea]

Just in case, folks didn't know it, Castro was quite a baseball player.  Apparently, the article says the long fabled story that he was scouted by MLB is false.

Fidel Castro will be forever linked to baseball

Fidel Castro, who died Friday at 90, was an avid baseball fan and fancied himself as a possible major-leaguer.

Reports of his baseball prowess are conflicting, but the former dictator was named the country’s best schoolboy athlete as a basketball player in Cuba’s capital city, Havana, according to The Associated Press.

Former major league third baseman Don Hoak wrote a 1964 Sport magazine article, “The Day I Batted Against Castro,” about facing the young pitcher in early 1950s Cuba. Castro was the subject of a 2006 novel by Tim Wendel, “Castro’s Curveball.” The book’s character encounters Castro pitching in the winter league in 1947.

Read More At: http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/fidel-castro-will-be-forever-linked-to-baseball-1.12674022

[Cripplecreek]

We all know the Jason Voorhees who slaughtered hundreds of teenagers but how many know the Jason Voorhees who loved his mamma? 

[EasyAce]

Shame that Don Hoak's account never happened. (It's been debunked for years.) Though he did
have the sort-of appropriate name for a hoaxer.

(Hoak is best remembered for the throwing error that spoiled Harvey Haddix's extra-innings
perfect game bid in 1959.)

[goatprairie]

Too bad Castro didn't make it as a major league pitcher. Would have spared Cuba and the world a lot of misery. Similarly, it's too bad someone didn't proclaim Hitler's pedestrian watercolors great art. He really wanted to be a great artist.
Which makes me wonder how many actual artists and athletes would have been ruthless, murdering  tyrants if they hadn't made it as artists or athletes.

[EasyAce]

Too bad Castro didn't make it as a major league pitcher. Would have spared Cuba and the world a lot of misery.

He didn't even make it as a college ballplayer. He was a law student when he flunked his tryout for the baseball
varsity. Quick---how many law students become failed ballplayers who break entire countries?

[Gefn]

Too bad Castro didn't make it as a major league pitcher. Would have spared Cuba and the world a lot of misery. Similarly, it's too bad someone didn't proclaim Hitler's pedestrian watercolors great art. He really wanted to be a great artist.
Which makes me wonder how many actual artists and athletes would have been ruthless, murdering  tyrants if they hadn't made it as artists or athletes.

I was thinking the same thing about Hitler. Supposedly Stalin wanted to be a priest.
 

[goatprairie]

I was thinking the same thing about Hitler. Supposedly Stalin wanted to be a priest.
 

Father Stalin during confession: "Your penance will be to say five Our Fathers, Five Hail Marys, and Ten Years in the gulag."