'El Duque' featured in ESPN 30 for 30 film 'Brothers in Exile'
Orlando Hernandez turned 49 (!) several weeks back, but he is only seven years removed from pitching - mostly effectively - for the Mets in 2007, his last major league stop.
So most New York baseball fans presumably still recall El Duque's remarkable professional and personal journey, during which he collected three World Series rings as a Yankee and another with the White Sox.
But the refresher course offered by ESPN's next "30 for 30" documentary, "Brothers in Exile," premiering Tuesday, is a reminder of how treacherous and improbable a path he traveled from Cuba to the Bronx, by way of The Bahamas and Costa Rica.
The "brother" in the title is his younger half-brother, Livan, who preceded him to the U.S. and to the World Series, where he won as a Marlin in 1997 as Orlando watched back home in Cuba, trapped and helpless.
The following autumn he was parading through Manhattan with his reunited family.
In the film, Norris Bosch, who then was his girlfriend and now his wife, recalls being shocked New Yorkers would shower them with "toilet paper" during the victory parade, something that back home in Cuba had been a difficult-to-find luxury.