All-Star game is Big Papi’s happy place

Reporting from SAN DIEGO —  Jose Fernandez did not choose the school he attended in seventh grade. The Cuban government chose it for him.

He was good at baseball, and the best athletes were channeled into special sports schools. The very best of these athletes would grow up to represent Cuba in international competition, in the name of a government that equated victory on the scoreboard to validation of socialism.

On a Monday afternoon in 2006, Fernandez and his classmates got to watch television. Cable and satellite television is not a part of life for ordinary Cubans. But this was no ordinary event. This was the first World Baseball Classic, and the Cuban national team was playing the Dominican Republic, live from Puerto Rico.

“The whole school was watching,” Fernandez said.

He was 13. He had never even watched a major league game. He was fascinated with this game, in particular with the jovial designated hitter for the Dominican Republic, the slugger who hit the only home run of the game. His name was David Ortiz.

“That was the first time I saw him,” Fernandez said. “I loved what he did. I started following him.”

Fernandez would not be long for Cuba. His first three escape attempts failed. On his fourth, after a boat ride during which his mother fell overboard and he jumped into turbulent waters to rescue her, he succeeded.

He was 15. He landed in Mexico, bused to Texas, made his way to Florida. It took him a year, but he could finally buy himself an Ortiz jersey.

“The first baseball jersey I bought when I came to America,” Fernandez said.

On an All-Star night Tuesday in which baseball did itself proud by naming its batting championships after Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew, the most heartwarming story was the final All-Star appearance by the 40-year-old Ortiz.

The man they call Big Papi, perhaps the player most beloved among his peers, delivered a pregame speech to the American League squad. When he left the game for a pinch-runner, he got a group hug on the field from his AL teammates.

But the most dramatic arc was this: The kid who adored Ortiz from a television set in the Cuban city of Santa Clara grew into the man who threw Ortiz the final pitch of his decorated All-Star career.

“It’s a dream pretty much coming true,” Fernandez said.

The two are friends now, the wise old man representing the Boston Red Sox and the 23-year-old with the electric arm representing the Miami Marlins. On Monday, the day before the All-Star game, the kid told his idol what pitches would be coming if the two faced each other.

“My boy told me that he was going to throw me nothing but fastballs,” Ortiz said with a laugh, “and the first pitch was a changeup.”

It was a fastball, Fernandez insisted, but at 80 mph. It was the proverbial pipe shot, the grooved fastball, the “here it is and hit it” sign of respect. But the pitch missed, and Ortiz took it for a ball.

“If he would have hit it, it would have been funny,” Fernandez said. “It would have been great. After that, I tried to make good pitches and tried to get him out.”

The fastballs screamed toward home plate at 95 and 96 mph. On the seventh pitch, with the count full, Fernandez nearly hit Ortiz with an 83-mph slider.

Ortiz shot Fernandez a bemused look. “You want me to break my back?” Ortiz said.

The two shared a laugh, and Ortiz went to first base, and then into the arms of his waiting teammates, many of whom are skeptical that a man hitting so well really can follow through on his vow to retire.

Fernandez now has an Ortiz jersey signed by the man himself. Ortiz is well aware of the Fernandez back story — the unsuccessful defections that landed him back in Cuba and left him a teenage prisoner, the survival and endurance required to strike out in a new land. He saw it on television, just as Fernandez saw him on television.

“I was watching it in my house, and I was crying like a little baby,” Ortiz said. “It was very touching. Sometimes people don’t realize the struggle that we go through to get to where we are.”

Ortiz said he is proud to leave the game in the hands of an “unbelievable” younger generation, and he is looking forward to his first summer off in 24 years — at the beach, beer in hand, completely unplugged.

Might he first take one last at-bat next spring? The Dominican Republic will defend its World Baseball Classic title in March, and Ortiz would not rule out taking part. You never know, after all, whom you might be inspiring.

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Twitter: @BillShaikin