El Duque Takes New York

HOLED UP IN HIS HOTEL ROOM before a recent game, New York Yankees pitcher Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez managed to stave off the distractions, temptations and anxieties that have followed him since he made his dramatic escape from Cuba last December. His refuge: the comfort of his pre-game ritual. Wearing the same gold chains that he's had since his days on Cuba's national team, Hernandez dug into his traditional game-day meal--""spaghetti, not linguine,'' he told a room-service attendant who got it wrong the first time. After lunch, he puffed on a Romeo y Julieta cigar, bantered with Cuban friends and family on his cellular phone, and then shouted, danced and drummed along with the salsa music blaring from his CD player. The album, the latest from the Cuban group Los Van Van, was called ""Te Pone la Cabeza Mala.'' Translation: ""It messes up your mind.''

Hernandez's routine, in fact, hardly seems conducive to the deep concentration that pitching requires. Many major-league pitchers go into a trancelike silence in the hours before they take the mound. But Duque was, and still is, looking for a different kind of peace. And on the field, at least, he seems to have found it: reaching the majors just halfway through the season, he has quickly become a star on the Yankees' most successful team ever, a club whose record--113-48--is the second best in baseball history. With his own record--12 wins, 4 losses and 131 strikeouts--the 31-year-old Cuban ace has become a star on the best team in baseball--and a serious, if unlikely, contender for American League Rookie of the Year. Fiercely competitive and superstitious, Hernandez counts on his pregame ritual to take him home to his roots, his source of inspiration. For all the commotion in his hotel room, a silent focal point was sitting, incongruously, on top of the television cabinet: a small, makeshift shrine to the Afro-Cuban deity Chango. A half-burned cigar was set across the top of a water glass surrounded by a red candle, a gold chain, a Cuban flag, a postcard depicting Jesus's crucifixion and--the latest addition--a miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty.

So far, most of Hernandez's prayers seem to have been answered. Less than a year ago, he was languishing in a cement shack near Havana's international airport. Banned for life from Cuban baseball, he was earning $8 a month as a physical therapist at a psychiatric hospital. (Cuban officials claimed--correctly, it turned out--that Duque wanted to follow his younger half-brother, Livan, a pitcher who defected in 1995 and went on to win the World Series's most-valuable-player award last year with the Florida Marlins.) On the day after Christmas, Hernandez and seven others lashed themselves to a rickety 20-foot boat heading north. The speedboat that was supposed to pick them up never came, and they were marooned for four days on a deserted Bahamian cay before being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. Within three months, Hernandez signed a four-year, $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees--and was reunited with his brother. Three months later, in June, he was in Yankee Stadium, bowing his head solemnly for the national anthem before winning his first major-league game. ""I had dreamed of that moment for a long time,'' he says.

And so, in one form or another, has America. Hernandez is, in many ways, Fidel Castro's nightmare, but he is also an incarnation of the classic American success story: a poor but talented immigrant who escaped repression to flourish as a star on the most fabled team in baseball. How could Hollywood resist such a script? Hernandez's agent, Joe Cubas, says, in fact, that Cuba Gooding Jr. has agreed to play the lead role in a proposed film on El Duque, while Antonio Banderas may play Cubas himself.

Real life, of course, is always messier than the movies. When NEWSWEEK spent several days with Hernandez recently, it was clear that his is not a simple Cinderella story. Duque seems giddy with his newfound freedom and wealth. But he is also sensitive enough to feel the pressures--and the pain--of having left his mother and two daughters behind in Cuba. ""On the surface, I try not to show anything,'' he says. ""But deep down, I am suffering a lot.'' Duque has lost 15 pounds since he joined the Yankees, and his anxiety about his family and his performance has him smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day.

Still, few people predicted that Duque would do so well so quickly. In Cuba, a country that has produced some of the finest pitchers in baseball, he owns the national record for career win-loss percentage (129-47, .733). But he didn't pitch after 1996, when he was passed over for the Olympic team and expelled from the game. During his days of internal exile, Hernandez kept himself in shape with early-morning runs and yoga sessions. But in Costa Rica, where he worked out after escaping, many major-league scouts considered him only a mediocre prospect. When Yankees owner George Steinbrenner gave him a $6.6 million contract, Yankee fans grumbled about wasting money on a 31-year-old ""rookie'' who hadn't played for nearly two years. But Hernandez racked up a 6-0 record at the Yankees' minor-league club in Columbus, and he got his invitation to the Show. Since then, he's been baffling batters--and delighting fans--with his deceptive high-kick delivery, his astonishing variety of pitches and his charismatic persona. In the final inning of his 3-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Sept. 14, the fans in Yankee Stadium rose to their feet and started chanting wildly: ""Du-que! Du-que!''