Red Sox fervor still runs rampant in Tiant family

Thirty-five years after her husband’s final game for the Boston Red Sox, a brilliant two-hit shutout that set up a one-game playoff against the Yankees, Maria Tiant remains a fervent Red Sox fan.

She watches most games at her home in Fort Myers, Fla., sometimes wearing a Red Sox shirt or a lucky hat, cheering, yelling, jumping straight up out of her seat as she nervously follows her team, especially now that it is fighting for a third championship since her husband, Luis, retired.

“Oh, my, I want them to win so much,” she said. “I am always yelling at the TV: ‘Why can’t you hit the ball? Please, hit the ball.’ I get upset because I know they can do it. But I still love them all.”

Many former players cherish their old teams and support them zealously. Others left their clubs under bad circumstances and harbor resentments. Some are merely indifferent to the fates of their former teams.

But what compels a woman to remain loyal to the team that her husband hasn’t pitched for since Jimmy Carter was president?

“I don’t know if other wives still root for the Red Sox or not,” she said in a telephone interview. “Maybe a lot of the wives aren’t still together with the players. Maybe they aren’t as interested.For me, I am just a big fan.”

In part, Maria Tiant roots for the Red Sox because Luis Tiant still works for them. For the past decade he has been an instructor and an ambassador of sorts for the Red Sox. He also owns a sausage stand outside Fenway Park.

But it’s more than that.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Maria Tiant came to love the Red Sox while Luis played for them from 1971 through 1978, years that included some indelible memories, including Tiant’s five hit shutout in Game 1 of the 1975 World Series at Fenway Park against the Cincinnati Reds. Tiant, now 72, also singled and scored a run in that game, missing home plate before sneaking back to touch it with his toe amid chants of “Looo-ee, Looo-ee.”

“I was sitting in the stands with my Red Sox noisemaker,” Maria Tiant recalled. “I will never forget when he went back to touch the plate. And his father was able to come from Cuba and throw out the first pitch, too. That was the first time I met him. I loved that man.”

Luis met Maria when he was playing in Mexico in 1960. Or, more accurately, when Maria was playing.

Then Maria Navarro, she played softball for her employer, the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, in Mexico City. During one game, as she was running in from centerfield, a handsome young man in the stands blew her a kiss. Her friends said, “Did you see that?” She just blushed and said, “Oh, he’s crazy.”

Luis was at the game with a friend, who was also friends with two sisters on Maria’s team. A few days later, in July 1960, the sisters hosted a party and invited Luis and Maria. They met formally for the first time, talked and danced, and began dating soon after.

On Oct. 1 of that year - in her 70s, Maria has remarkable recall for dates - Luis went back to Cuba, which was in the early stages of Fidel Castro’s regime. But during their first months together, she said, he never told her he was a pitcher for the Tigers in the Mexican League.

Over the winter, he wrote letters from Cuba, and they spoke on the phone a few times. He returned to Mexico on May 25, 1961, on one of the last flights to Mexico City allowed to leave Cuba. On Aug. 12, some time after he revealed that he was a professional player, they were married, a union forged through baseball.

In 1962, Luis moved to the United States to pitch in the Cleveland Indians’ system. Maria remained in Mexico City during his first 12 major league seasons, and their children, two boys and a girl, were born there. In 1974, the family moved to Milton, Mass., just south of Boston,during the height of Luis’ success with the Red Sox.

Daniel, the Tiants’ youngest child, is 39 and runs Tiant Cigar. The company was founded by Luis, whose love of cigars has been well known since his pitching days, when he was nicknamed El Tiante. Daniel also spends time watching the Red Sox with his mother, and trying not to get in her way.

“She’s really into it, and she really knows the game,” Daniel said by telephone. “When my dad pitched, it was about supporting him. Now, it’s just about rooting for her Red Sox, and she is zeroed in on it. Sometimes I just have to get out of there because it’s pretty intense.”

When Luis pitched for the Indians, Maria rooted for them. When Luis left Boston to join the Yankees, she cheered for them, as well, and also for the Pirates and Angels, Luis’ last two teams. (He pitched 19 years for six major league teams, and many say he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.)

But there was always something special about the Red Sox. Maria, who still goes to games in Boston, said her favorite player was David Ortiz - “of course.”

When the team’s owners asked Luis to work for the Red Sox, Maria said, it was like going home. “I was so happy,” she said. “I always like to think of my husband with the Red Sox.”

Sports, Pages 26 on 10/27/2013

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