Speaking ill of the undead

Funny, but I never imagined that Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell was Cuban by heritage and Puerto Rican by birth. Obviously, the name put me off.

Lowell, 32, recounted the trauma the Castro regime has caused his family.

"My dad had to pack up his suitcase at 10 years old with his three brothers, who had nothing. And my mother was 11 years old and my grandfather, who'd been a dentist for 15 or 20 years, had to go back to school to be (politically) re-educated," Lowell said.

"My cousins were political prisoners. My father-in-law was a political prisoner for 15 years because, at 19, they asked him if he agreed with communism and he said, 'No,' so they sentenced him to death. That's not the way to live. I know it's terrible to say, but I think of all of that and I hope he (Castro) passes away.

"I don'’t care if he dies," Lowell said. "There are so many people who have died because of him and there's been so much wrongdoing and so many human rights violations that I hope he does die. That sounds bad, but it's the truth."

Lowell, like many (most?) Cuban-Americans is just waiting for Castro to die.