Mary Hemingway met Maria and Manolin, Pedro Jr.'s cousin, at the Finca not long after Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961.

Manolin said, “Mrs. Hemingway, I want to show you something.”

He was holding a small package, postmarked Rochester, Minnesota, dated June 1961. Manolin opened it to the dedication page of The Old Man and the Sea, the book where Hemingway had paid tribute to his publisher, Charles Scribner, and editor, Max Perkins.

Under the dedication, Hemingway had written, in his distinguishable handwriting:

“To Manolin. You helped two old fishermen—Santiago and me—attain humility. I am sick now, and I have a hard time remembering things. Without memory, a writer is out of business, like a fisherman without bait. But please don’t worry. As you will read in this book, man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. I wish you the very best.

Ernest M. Hemingway, June 16, 1961.

P.S. I see from the papers that your cousin Pedro is tearing up the Appalachian League—he’s hitting over .400. My, what a pretty swing!”

Pedro Jr. signed with the Minnesota Twins in February 1961. The U.S. invaded Cuba in April 1961, landing at the Bay of Pigs. Papa Hemingway died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.

Papa Joe Cambria remained as a Twins scout when the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961. By then, he had signed over four hundred Cuban ballplayers to contracts with professional baseball teams in the United States. Early in 1962, he became very sick. Papa Joe Cambria was flown from Havana to Minneapolis to be treated at the St. Barnabas Hospital in Minneapolis. He died on September 24, 1962.

Pedro Jr.—aka “Tony” Oliva—led professional baseball with a .410 batting average with the Minnesota Twins Appalachian League affiliate in Wytheville, Virginia in 1961. Tony Oliva who officially became a U.S. citizen in 1971 on the heels of his third American League batting crown.

The phone crackled. The voice at the other end of the line was soft, almost muffled. Papa Hemingway was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was being treated for hypertension and depression. At least that’s what the doctors said. The electromagnetic shock treatments weren’t helping much. He was still depressed, and damn, he could hardly write a few sentences without breaking into tears. He was not only losing his memory—he was beginning to lose his mind. But he remembered Papa Joe and his promise to help.