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Vina Enjoys Close View Of playoffs; Former Brewer Provides Spark
Mark Herrmann Newsday
October 15, 2000
There is good reason to feel liberated after you've been traded from the mid-1990s New York Mets, as Fernando Vina was. There is even better reason to feel liberated after you've been traded to a contender by the ever- foundering Milwaukee Brewers, as Vina was.
But there is no feeling like knowing you were saved from a life that has little hope, as Vina was.
"My mother," he said, "was pregnant with me when they left Cuba."
He thinks about where he might be today if Andres and Olga Vina had not been able to get out of Cuba through diplomatic channels and with a lot of sacrifice. "I would have been there, in communism," he said.
He imagines that he might have tried to escape on his own, the way Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez and Rey Ordonez did. He doesn't know if he would be making millions and thriving as the sparkplug second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals.
"It looks like a dream come true," Andres said from his home outside Sacramento, Calif., thinking back to his own childhood, when he couldn't afford a baseball glove, and his young adulthood, when the minimum wage was just a wish. "If you're a tourist, they show you everything good. You have to be in Cuba a month and you'll know."
Fernando knows. He said: "They came from nothing and they came to the United States with nothing but a suitcase."
Their son practically has the key to the city in St. Louis. He hit .300 this season for the Cardinals, who acquired him for former Met Juan Acevedo and two minor-leaguers Dec. 20.
"We looked at him as one of the premier leadoff guys and second basemen in the game," Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty said. "He's been the catalyst for our offense. We kind of go as he goes. He has a lot of enthusiasm, he's very positive. That's the way he is, there's no BS to him."
He hit .308 in the Division Series sweep over the Atlanta Braves, his first taste of the post-season. Six times in that series, he reached base by hit, walk or hit by pitch.
The Cardinals scored 15 runs in those six innings. He led off Game 3 with a homer. He was so excited after making a good play on a bunt in Game 1, he nearly wrenched pitcher Mike Timlin's neck with a sprinting hug going off the field.
"It's awesome," Vina said. "You get goosebumps."
His whole life story is made of goosebumps.
The elder Vina said that his brother was able to get out of Cuba for Spain, then moved to the United States. He applied for visas on behalf of Andres' family.
"In Cuba, they said, You want to go to the United States? You've got to work,' " Andres said. "For six years, they made me cut sugar cane."
Without pay.
"I was lucky my mother-in-law helped us a little bit," he said. "They don't give you anything."
By the time they left in 1968, Andres and Olga had a young son and a young daughter. Fernando's uncle set up Andres with a job at a lumber yard in California, where Andres taught Fernando how to hit and play the infield.
The Yankees drafted Vina in 1987, but he didn't sign.
"They weren't offering me enough money, and I had a scholarship from Arizona State," he said. He was drafted by the Mets in 1990, signed with them, then was taken by Seattle in the '92 Rule V draft.
"I had good years," he said of his genesis with the Mets. "They didn't pay too much attention to me until I got 'Rule Fived' by the Mariners and the Mariners put me in the big leagues. Then all of a sudden, they said, 'This guy can play.' "
The Mets took him back when the Mariners declined to keep him on the big-league roster (a Rule V stipulation). He made the club in 1994 and even appeared to have won a lineup spot.
"They told me I was the starting shortstop, then they traded Anthony Young for Jose Vizcaino," he said. Vina probably wasn't ready anyway. And he is more of a second baseman than a shortstop.
"I will challenge anybody, anywhere to find somebody who turns the double play better, quicker than Fernando," manager Tony La Russa said.
Being able to turn double plays this time of year is a gift for someone who normally was two weeks into his off- season by now. Vina, 31, never was going to get to the post-season with Milwaukee.
"That was a great place for me to start off," he said.
He and his family know about humble starting points. "I bought them a house last year in a real nice neighborhood," he said. "They cry a lot, with the way things have come about."
Andres, in from a day's errands on his five acres of property, said: "I pinch myself to figure if it's true."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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