(CNN Spanish) — When talking about Cuba and baseball, one of the references is the pitcher Luis Tiant, “el Tiante”, born in Marianao, Cuba, on November 23, 1940 and died this Tuesday.
Tiant endeared himself to the fans of the teams he played for since the late 1950s, not only for his ability to dominate hitters while in the prime of his career, when he twice led the teams in ERA. Major League Baseball (MLB), but also for his particular “windup”, that way of moving his body backwards before throwing the ball from one side of his arm, which made it very difficult for rival hitters to decipher his movements.The Cuban, who spent 17 years away from his parents in his pursuit of success in sports, played for six MLB teams: Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates and California Angels. Between Cleveland and Boston, with his unusual way of throwing and his peculiar horseshoe-shaped mustache, he left his most lasting mark.
Tiant was called to three All-Star Games and won the ERA championships (fewest earned runs allowed per game) in 1968, with Cleveland, and 1972 already wearing a Red Sox uniform. In this last year, he achieved the best ERA in all of MLB, with 1.91 earned runs allowed per game.
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1968: a season to remember
The ’68 season is remembered in Cleveland, and in general in the world of baseball, as one of the best for any pitcher: Tiant won 21 games and lost nine, pitched 19 complete games, nine shutouts – four of them consecutively – and made 1.60 the record for the lowest ERA for a season in the American League for decades in 50 years.
However, perhaps the deepest mark was left in the memorable 1975 World Series, where Tiant won two games for the Boston Red Sox, who ended up succumbing to the Cincinnati Reds.
The Cuban won games 1 and 4 of the series, and then returned to the mound to pitch eight innings in game 6, in a game that Boston won, with Carlton Fisk’s famous home run.
Tiant left total MLB records of 229 wins and 172 losses, with a 3.30 ERA, and a series of numbers that, even today, are difficult to beat:
He won at least 20 games four times in his career. He pitched 187 complete games (more than Don Sutton, Don Drysdale, Lefty Gomez and Dizzy Dean, all Hall of Famers). And 49 shutouts (more than Roger Clemens, Whitey Ford, Catfish Hunter, Sandy Koufax and Bob Feller, all of them – except Clemens – in the Hall of Fame).
Additionally, Tiant stood out for being a prolific pitcher in the Caribbean basin. In Venezuela, his internship with Industriales de Valencia, Leones del Caracas and Tiburones de La Guaira is remembered. With the latter, he threw a game without hits or runs to the capital team in the 1971-1972 season.
However, despite all these merits, the Tiant was left waiting for great recognition for a career full of glories. While it is true that he was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame and the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame-Museum, the doors of immortality of the National Baseball Hall of Fame ―located in Cooperstown, New York― never They opened for him.
This Tuesday, MLB and the Red Sox announced Tiant’s death, which occurred at his home in Maine. However, his legacy, which expanded the path for Latin pitchers in the MLB, as well as his charisma and his peculiar way of throwing, which dominated the game for two decades, will never be forgotten, even when he was left waiting for his entry in life. to the Hall of Fame.
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