The Lost Son of Havana

The Hockomock Film Festival showed "The Lost Son of Havana" on Friday night. It's a documentary filmed in 2007 about former Boston Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant's return to Cuba after 46 years. It's a surprising film. Now I shouldn't be surprised because I'm the guy who picks the films for the club, but I added this one to the list on the recommendation of friends and the Internet Movie Data Base where the film got a score of 8.5 out of 10. As a reference, the members of IMDB, presumably not the ones that rated Luis' film, gave "Citizen Kane"a mere 8.6.

Lost Son was directed by John Hock who has done several things you've never heard of. The Farrelly Brothers known for some of the grossest of the recent gross out-comedies were the executive producers. The 102 minute documentary appears to have been made for a showing on ESPN. Why watch? For Red Sox fans of a certain age, Luis Tiant was our favorite Red Sox player who led the team to the promised land of the 1975 World Series. Tiant left Cuba in 1961 and all ballplayers who did so were banned from returning by the Castro Regime. Finally after 46 years, Tiant is allowed to return as a "coach" of an amateur baseball team-relations between the two countries are still so screwed up that the film crew had to be listed as players on the team and actually play!

Once it gets rolling, the film splits between retrospectives of Tiant's career  and his visit to the old neighborhood in Havana. It turns out to be a complex story both from the perspective of baseball history and from the range of human emotions seen in the film. If you've ever left your childhood home, and then returned after a long time, you'll understand some of the things Tiant feels. He has the added question of whether he did the right thing-did he desert his country and more important his family and friends to pursue his career or did that career have a special importance beyond the man who played through it? The film is fast paced in its Boston segments and meanders along in Cuba reflecting the difference in lifestyle between the Big Leagues and a very poor (but emotionally rich) country. The flim doesn't hit you over the head with its messages-the passage of time, making sense of how a life is lived and the choices that were made, the relationship between father and son, and the importance of going home. One of the most interesting things in the film is how the everyday people cope with these questions and the larger context of baseball and Cold War history.

Perhaps the most interesting character to emerge from the film is Luis Tiant, Sr.. We first see him in a photograph that Luis takes back to Cuba, but by the end of the film we have a full biography of this complex and historically significant man. "Lefty" Tiant was too dark-skinned to play in the major leagues before the color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson so he played for 17 years in the Negro Leagues as one of their best pitchers. It was his experience that shaped the younger Luis' career. I've been a long time advocate of getting Luis Tiant, Jr. into the Hall of Fame, but now believe that both son and father deserve a place there.

"The Lost Son of Havana" is definitely a film worth seeing. It's one of those documentaries that pulls you back into it even a few days after seeing it. Unfortunately, it's hard to find. Netflix doesn't carry it so you'll have to buy it from Amazon like I did.