MIAMI — Vladimir Nunez, Michael Tejera and Hansel Izquierdo behave like brothers in the Florida Marlins' bullpen. In a sense, they are.
They exercise together, they roughhouse together, and they tease each other.
In the mid-1990s, they defected from Cuba, Tejera and Izquierdo on the same day.
The trio is living a dream of freedom and happiness in the United States that they never imagined in Cuba. They live near each other in Miami's suburbs, play pepper games before warmups and chat during stretching exercises.
"I wasn't always hungry, but I didn't have meat to eat every day like I do here," Tejera said. "There were times when I had water mixed with sugar for breakfast. I didn't decide what I wanted to eat. I had to eat what was available."
Tejera and Izquierdo played together as children and on the Cuban Junior National Team, and ended up as teammates at Southwest High School — the alma mater of former Cubs star Andre Dawson — after defecting as teenagers. Nunez, two years older than Tejera and Izquierdo, often competed against them in Cuba.
"They've put forth a tremendous effort to get to the majors," Nunez said of Tejera and Izquierdo, drafted a round apart by the Marlins in 1995. "Not many teams have three Cubans in a bullpen. We help each other and support each other any way we can."
Nunez defected from the Cuban National B Team in October 1995 and signed his first professional deal the following February with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
"Baseball players in Cuba have some privileges, with respect to living well, but it doesn't compare to the good life in this country," Nunez said. "That's one of the reasons I came to play baseball here. I had to look to the future . . . and put my family in a better position."
Looming over batters at 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, the 27-year-old Nunez began his career as a long reliever and spot starter. He remained in that role after being traded from Arizona to Florida along with right-handed starter Brad Penny and minor-league outfielder Abraham Nunez for closer Matt Mantei in 1998.
The trade hurt Nunez at first because he and his family had established ties in Arizona and he was seeing the team develop into a contender. But his frustration was tempered by the realization that he was going to South Florida, which has a large Cuban population.
"(The trade) was a chance to catch up with people who were my neighbors and whom I grew up with," Nunez said.
Tejera, 25, defected during a changeover at Miami International Airport while his team was headed to the 1994 World Championships in Canada.
"I made my decision when I arrived at the airport here. I didn't have any notion of how this life in this country was," Tejera said. "All I knew was that the situation in Cuba wasn't good, and it still isn't good. I wanted to be a free person."