Cuban Baseball Legends: Omar Linares Izquierdo, "The Kid of Cuban Baseball"

Omar Linares is widely considered the best third baseman found anywhere in the world outside of the U.S. major leagues during much of the 1980s and 1990s. What Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard or Satchel Paige may have been to the first half of the 20th Century (potential national sporting icons barred from the big-league stage by racial politics), “El Niño” Linares similarly was to the century’s final decades (a sure-fire big-league star kept from baseball’s biggest stage by the fallout from Cold War politics).