INTERVIEW: Hopeful journey from Cuba to MLB is subject of new PBS doc
Photo: The Last Out tells the story of Happy Oliveros and other Cuban baseball players. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Miller / PBS / Provided by Cinema Tropical with permission.
Directors Sami Khan and Michael Gassert knew they wanted to tell a story about the journey that players take to Major League Baseball, but they weren’t sure exactly who to focus on for their documentary. Over the course of conversations, interviews and flights to Central America, they found their subject: Cuban baseball players who take a risk-filled trip away from their native country with the hopes of impressing professional scouts from the United States. Along the way, they experience disheartening and devastating realities.
The documentarians’ efforts have resulted in the new film The Last Out, premiering tonight, Oct. 3, on the POV program on PBS. Free streaming is available at PBS.org through Nov. 2, and the documentary will be available in both the Spanish and English languages.
Khan and Gassert’s cameras center on baseball players Happy Oliveros, Carlos O. González and Víctor Baró, who face uncertain futures as they leave Cuba to train in Central America, perhaps with no method of returning home one day. That’s a heavy proposition: Leave one’s home country for good, and there’s nothing guaranteed on the other side. As too many players know, making it in the major leagues is never a definite.
Khan, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker of St. Louis Superman, said he had seen films about the journey players take to the United States, but he always felt there was a missing element. “We felt like there was something being left out of the narrative, and that was the risks that these guys were taking to make it to the major leagues,” Khan said in a recent Zoom interview. “There would be occasional newspaper articles about it or an ESPN Outside the Lines thing, but we wanted to go beyond just a breaking news piece to understand the risks that these ballplayers were taking in terms of leaving their homeland and taking a chance on the major leagues. So thematically that’s where we started.”
After they began researching the topic, Khan and Gassert found a Cuban-American sports agent who was quite influential in establishing a market for Cuban baseball players. The filmmakers reached out and explained their project.
“And eventually he agreed to let us interview him, and at the end of that interview, he mentioned that he had this group of ballplayers in Central America, in Costa Rica, Cuban ballplayers that he was training with the hopes of having them sign major league contracts,” Khan said. “And he asked us if we wanted to go down there, and of course we jumped at the opportunity.”
At first, Gassert thought the film would end up being centered on this sports agent, and the documentarians would weave a redemption tale out of his ups and downs, which have been documented by many news outlets. However, after they visited the Central American training facility, they realized there was more to the story.
“There’s a lot of excitement around these players,” Gassert said. “We really wanted to get to know these guys, and I think [the agent] was happy to have the film crew there and get these guys used to being in front of the camera. Baseball is performative, so that part of it was kind of easy. But it really wasn’t until after that first showcase, and we went to their apartments, when they were celebrating and playing dominoes and cooking up chicharrones, where you could feel the brotherhood and the excitement. These guys knew each other from playing in the National Series in Cuba, but they weren’t necessarily the best of friends. But they found their countrymen together with this same mission of signing with a major league team. There was so much hope, and as you see in the movie, the Cuban market was at an all-time high.”
Gassert remembers at one point González turning to the filmmakers and asking them when the film was coming out and who would be the main focus. They didn’t know the exact answers at that time, but Khan and Gassert started to realize these prospective players were the dominant story.
“I remember being in the car with Sami in the taxi ride back to our hotel, and I looked at him,” Gassert said. “And I was like, ‘What do you think? I think this is our story right here with these guys,’ and we came back down soon after to shoot another showcase. We were like, ‘Carlos, yeah, we want to make this about you guys, when you sign, when you go into the minor leagues.’ You don’t think at that time to say, ‘Yeah, we also want to be with you, too, when your girlfriend dumps you, and you’ve got no place to go and the shit hits the fan.’ That’s really where a lot of people have reacted to the intimacy or the feel of the storytelling. Our style that we’ve embarked upon is just really about getting to know these players, putting ourselves in their shoes, not just going somewhere and extracting something and leaving. We formed lifelong friendships and relationships with these guys, and that’s what took us on their journeys. Our instinct was always to just stay with them as far as we could.”
What Khan and Gassert eventually find is that these three players and their path to the American baseball dream is fraught. There are broken promises, immigration setbacks and “dark realities,” as PBS puts it. They are stuck between countries, away from their families and seeing firsthand what it’s like to experience the fractured relationship between the United States and Cuba.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Last Out, directed by Sami Khan and Michael Gassert, will premiere on POV on PBS Monday, Oct. 3, with streaming available on PBS.org through Nov. 2. Both Spanish and English-language versions of the film will be available, and the documentary is being presented in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month. Click here for more information.
