Cuban Andy Pages' Dodgers success comes with bittersweet family separation

"Just 90 miles of open ocean separate Andy Pages' boyhood home in Mantua, Cuba, from the southern tip of the Florida Keys. Yet the short distance between those two points is unbridgeable. Politics has separated Cuba and the U.S. for most of the last 65 years, the last vestiges of a Cold War policy that has divided families and hurt people on both sides of the Straits of Florida far more than it has punished the Cuban government."

"So when the Dodgers open the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday, Pages' parents and his sister won't be sitting in the stands with the other players' families. They'll be searching for the game on Cuban TV or on a spotty internet link. "Or radio," Pages adds. Pages, 24, already has one World Series ring and is playing in the postseason for a second straight year."

"It was an outstanding sophomore season, one that saw him become the first Dodgers center fielder in 13 years to hit better than .250 with at least 23 homers. Yet aside from his wife, Alondra, no one in his family has seen Pages in a Dodgers uniform other than in pictures or on a fuzzy TV screen while contact with his family is limited to two or three phone calls a week - and even that schedule is heavily reliant on Cuba's unreliable electrical infrastructure."

Andy Pages will play in the World Series while his parents and sister cannot leave Cuba because of long-standing political restrictions. Only 90 miles of ocean separate his boyhood Mantua from the Florida Keys, but the distance is unbridgeable. Pages defected from Cuba at 15 and saw his family only once during a brief 2023 visit after seven years apart. He hit 27 home runs this season, ranking second among Dodgers behind Shohei Ohtani, and finished with 86 RBIs and a .272 average. Pages celebrates postseason victories without family present; contact is limited to two or three phone calls weekly and depends on Cuba’s unreliable electrical infrastructure. His wife, Alondra, is the only family member regularly with him.

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