The Cuba Diaries: A Party with Living Legends

Editor's Note: VICE Sports senior staff writer Jorge Arangure Jr. recently went on a reporting trip to Cuba. "The Cuba Diaries" series is a collection of his stories while exploring the country. Click here to catch up on previous installments.

The characterization of Cubans as friendly has mostly rung true during my trip. I've quickly made new friends and acquaintances, and during one of my last nights on the island, I snag a dinner party invite from some of them. They tell me that Omar Linares has also been invited. This is reason alone to be excited.

For the uninformed, which is most of the world, Linares is perhaps the best Cuban baseball player of all time, certainly among the best of his generation, regardless of country. He never defected, so an American audience never got to see him play every day. But in Cuba, Linares is a living legend, an embodiment of the great players that the country's factory-like baseball system can produce, and a glorious example of someone committed to the ideals of the revolution.

Linares could have left and made millions. He was approached countless times by major league scouts. If there was anyone who should have wanted to defect and make a name for himself, it was him. But Linares stayed.

On my way to the party, I find myself really hoping that he will be there. I arrive at the house for dinner and within minutes I'm handed a glass of wine. About a half hour later, Linares arrives with his wife. Hanging out with Linares turns out to be as a great as I had hoped it would be.

Soon, he starts to field questions from the guests. The 47-year-old Linares—once trim and athletic, but now thick—talks about how he was a track athlete as a kid and mostly fell into playing baseball. He tells me a story of how once in his prime he was out with famed boxer Félix Savón, who got so upset after breaking up with his girlfriend that he punched down a door. He tells me that Ben McDonald—whom he batted against in the Olympics—might be the toughest pitcher he's ever faced.

I keep asking questions and he keeps answering them without a hint of being annoyed. Linares is friendly, engaging, and tells stories without me having to ask for them. In fact, Linares smiles and laughs the entire time. He wants to talk more. He'd talk and drink wine all night if he could. Linares never got to achieve true international fame. But he will always have his memories, and sharing them is his way of reliving the past, the best moments of his life. Linares will always be beloved in Cuba. By talking to a foreign reporter perhaps he could find himself beloved elsewhere too. In his voice, you can hear a hint of that yearning for recognition.

And if meeting Linares was all there was to the night, then it would have been a fantastic evening, truly one of the more memorable moments of my career.

But soon my attention is pulled in another direction. An older, dark skinned, bald man walks into the room. He is short and slight, but he moves easily, without hesitation, like someone much younger.

The host of the party soon introduces me to this 70-year-old man.

"Meet Orlando Martinez," the host says, "the first ever Cuban Olympic gold medalist."

I'm a bit taken aback. But these kinds of things happen in Cuba. You can stumble right into history.

Orlando Martinez knows that his place in Cuban history exists only because of a couple technicalities. Firstly, he isn't really Cuba's first Olympic gold medalist. He's just Cuba's first gold medalist who participated in an Olympics that most people consider to be legitimate.

Ramón Fonst, Albertson Van Zo Post, and Manuel Díaz each won gold medals in fencing in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. If you weren't aware that an Olympics took place in St. Louis it's probably because the 1904 Olympics are an event that most people ignore. Few countries participated, several competitions were tainted by cheating, and the event lasted almost six months. In other words, nobody actually considers this a real Olympics.

Secondly, Martinez is Cuba's first gold medalist only because of his size. During his fighting days, Martinez weighed about 120 pounds. He actually doesn't weigh much more than that now.

Usually, in every type of international boxing competition, fights are scheduled based on weight classes. The lower weight classes fight first and then the competition ends with the heavyweights. The big guys are the main event.

Cuba's 1972 Olympic boxing team was stacked. Years of post-revolution funding had helped turn boxing into a premier sport in the country. The Cuban boxing federation believed at least a couple of fighters would likely medal in Munich, and heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson was almost surely going to win gold. As for Martinez, well, nobody really thought much of him.

"You know what happened," he tells me, "I fought so hard to get that medal, but nobody thought that I would win. I fought for that. And the fact that people told me that I was too skinny to win made me fight even harder. I was convinced that I would win."

As usual, the 1972 Olympic boxing slate was set up according to weight class. The 112 pound fighters were first. Cuba's entry in that weight class did not make it to the medal round. But Martinez in the 120 pound weight class made it all the way to the finals where he was matched up against Mexican Alfonso Zamora, the prohibitive favorite in that category.

"He appeared to be stronger than I was," Martinez said. "He had big arms. I was just this skinny guy. He was considered much better than me. In fact, he was considered one of the best athletes in his country."

Also advancing to their respective finals were 148 pound fighter Emilio Correa, and the heavyweight Stevenson.

Martinez fought first. Prior to the fight, Martinez was laid up in the locker room. He had not been feeling well week. He had been coughing. His trainers were convinced Martinez had bronchitis. Or at least a bad cold. They even suggested to him that perhaps he should not fight the formidable Zamora.

"I came here to fight, and I'm going to fight," he told his trainers.

One punch from Zamora might have sent the weakened Martinez to the mat. But Martinez almost never got hit.

"Everybody says that I was the best tactician," he says. "I never let guys hit me. I was only knocked out once."

People always told Martinez he was a natural fighter. As a boy before the Revolution, he used to hang around several professional fighters from his Havana neighborhood. He studied their moves. Sometimes they let him spar against them. And he'd never get hit. Even guys who were bigger than him couldn't touch him. And Martinez could smack them back with a counterpunch. He was small but he had a great reach.

One time when he was 10 years old, Martinez got into a street-fight against a boy from the neighborhood at the same time that a noted trainer happened to be walking by. After Martinez easily dispatched of his rival, the trainer approached him.

"Son, you look like you're going to be a boxing champion one day," the trainer told Martinez. "You look good. You don't let guys hit you."

Martinez was flattered. But he told the trainer that his father, a former boxer, didn't want him to get involved in the sport. Martinez's father wanted a different life for his son. He wanted Orlando to focus on academics. The trainer was undeterred. He asked Martinez to take him to his father.

"Sir, you have a champion here," the trainer told Martinez's father. "When he gets older, he's going to be an Olympic champion."

Martinez's father just stared at the trainer and shook his head

"What he has to do is fight those books so he can learn to be a professional and a quality person," the father said. "He's not the type of person to get into boxing."

Martinez's father wouldn't let him fight. But the trainer also wouldn't take no for an answer. He reiterated, "Sir, I'm telling you, that boy is going to be a champion."

The father kept staring at the trainer. Finally he said, "Fine. Take him. Go make him a champion."

That story stuck in Martinez's mind as he was getting ready to fight Zamora. Of course he was going to fight, regardless of how sick he felt. He was destined to be a champion.The key was not to get hit.

And he never really did. He eluded the powerful Zamora the entire fight. In the end it wasn't even a contest. Martinez won all 5 rounds. He dominated the match.

"People always ask me, 'Orlando why don't you have any marks on your face?" he says. "I tell them it's because I knew how to defend myself. My fighting philosophy was, 'I'll give it to you, you won't give it back to me.'"

Later in the evening, Correa and Stevenson also won their gold medal matches. But Martinez had done it first. Hence, he's recognized as Cuba's first true gold medalist.

These days the 70-year-old still keeps himself in the game. He's a boxing instructor and physical education teacher. Despite his age, he is still spry and energetic. Somehow he's even managed to elude the effects of time. Never get hit.

Every so often, people will come to his house to see his medal and to look at some of his old photographs.

"Is that really you?" they ask. "You look so small and skinny."

Martinez laughs and answers that of course it's him. He's Cuba's first Olympic gold medalist, he proudly tells them, as he proudly told me.

The dinner party ends and soon I'm on my way back to the hotel. After having spent so many days on my trip talking to people who are excited about the future, it was comforting to have spent an evening immersed in the past.

It's then that I start to feel better about Cuba's future. It was silly for me to even worry. Cuba will be fine.

Vapid tourists and selfish investors may soon inundate the island, but the people here will always have their cherished history. That will never go away. People like Omar Linares and Orlando Martinez will live forever.