The standing ovation echoed through Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana as Ron Fraser walked to the first base coach's box. This was 1987. Fraser heard the 60,000 fans, but didn't see Fidel Castro beckoning him. Not at first, anyhow.
Fraser thought the fans still cheered an unknown college pitcher named Jim Abbott. A few months earlier, Fraser, the Miami coach, was told he needed to see this Michigan pitcher in choosing the U.S. team.
The kid had great stuff and great character, he was told. There was just one issue. He had one hand.
"Can he pitch?" Fraser said.
Fraser, you see, believed deeply in the human spirit. This is how his great life that ended Sunday should be remembered. Maybe he died in the perfect week, one where hoaxes, frauds and the stench of modern sports dominated the headlines.
Fraser was an original. He had genuine vision. He was given a baseball team at the University of Miami and invented the college game like Edison did electricity.
He didn't just build champions at Miami. He built fun. He ran the "Hidden Ball Trick," in the College World Series. He hired a mascot who did a ski-jump onto the field in the fifth inning.
He had promotions before anyone else like the "Cruise to Nowhere," where fans came with packed bags and one lucky fan went somewhere. He had a $5,000-a-plate funder-raiser for college baseball when no one thought such a thing possible. "The Wizard," he was called.
His was a life of such stories. Small nights. Big events. Communal laughs. His greatness wasn't the stuff of modern action heroes puffed up by headlines. Even after all these years, it's hard to explain just the impact Fraser had on a landscape that's changed.
"People talk about the University of Miami as a family, but Ron Fraser brought the community into the family,'' says John Routh, who was hired by Fraser out of a South Carolina mascot uniform to become Sebastian The Ibis. "He made it possible for any parent to drop a child off at a Miami game and say, 'See you in two hours.'
"They knew it was safe. They knew it was fun. That was all Ron's doing."
If there was one night that summed up Fraser, it was the one that wasn't televised, wasn't announced loudly and didn't even happen in this country. It was that night in Cuba so long ago.
Fraser picked Abbott to start the first U.S. game ever in Castro's Cuba. Of course he did. He always embraced the dramatic. All the newspaper headlines that day talked of, "El Mano" — the one-handed man.
The first Cuban batter, Victor "El Loco" Mesa, did the expected. He dropped a bunt. Fraser had told Abbott this would happen. In fact, when he worked out Abbott, Fraser had the first batter drop a bunt on him.
That night in Havana, Abbott took off his glove, fielded the ball cleanly with his hand and threw out Mesa. Sixty-thousand fans jumped to their feet and gave a standing ovation. Play was delayed. The applause lasted for minutes.
After that half-inning as he walked to the coach's box, Fraser thought it was for Abbott again when the fans stood. Then he saw Castro arrived. The Cuban president beckoned him. Fraser crossed his arms and stood in the coach's box. He didn't move.
A Cuban official approached Fraser and explained Castro wanted to meet him as the U.S. coach. Fraser shook his head no. He stood, arms folded, in the coach's box.
It was Castro who budged. He walked across the field and met Fraser, who stood there diplomatically but defiantly.
"I've got too many friends in Miami whose lives were affected by that man,'' Fraser said after the game.
We'd joke about that night over the years. "The night a one-hand man won and Castro crawled,'' I'd tell him. In a couple of dozen of Super Bowls, 10 Olympics, numerous championship events, I've never seen a night like that.
With every death, there's the fear we've lost something precious and irreplaceable. Ron Fraser's feats don't make him heroic. They make him authentic, though. An original. Especially in this week of shams and shame, he had a life to celebrate.
