In 2007, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant finally got permission to visit Cuba, his native country which he hadn’t seen since he got stranded in the United States during a 1961 baseball tour and decided to stay. Cuban ruler Fidel Castro told him and other athletes who were in the United States at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion that they could either come home and play in Cuba as amateurs or never come home again, thus turning Tiant’s three-month trip into 46 years of exile.

Wishing to see his native land again before he died, however, Tiant embarked on his 2007 sentimental journey along with a film crew led by director Jonathan Hock. They recorded Tiant’s emotional encounters with family members he hadn’t seen in nearly half a century as well as with people he met on the street, some of whom knew of his success in the United States because Cuba is still baseball mad.

The results are the winning documentary The Lost Son of Havana, a very personal and close-up look at one of baseball’s greats adrift in a place he once knew as well as the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate at Fenway Park, but where he is now a stranger.

Hock’s film, for which the Farrelly brothers served as executive producers, will largely appeal to baseball fans who remember Tiant’s glory years at Fenway as well as to those who want a peek inside Cuba today. They will be rewarded with many shots of everyday street scenes with still-elegant buildings and 1950s automobiles. (The film begins a limited weeklong run Friday at a handful of theaters in the Boston orbit, including the Showcase Cinemas in Warwick.)

At the age of 67 (when Lost Son of Havana was made), Tiant has grown into a bear of a man who is affable, kindly and is sometimes bowled over by the people he meets and the sights he revisits, a Cuban Santa Claus.

On his journey, he carries along a large photograph of his father. Luis Tiant Sr., known as Lefty Tiant, was himself a star baseball player in Cuba who once dreamed of joining the major leagues in the United States where he spent 17 summers. Yet because of the times (the 1930s) and his dark skin color, Lefty never got beyond playing in America’s Negro Leagues, although during an exhibition game he got to strike out Babe Ruth.

At the outset we’re told by unobtrusive narrator Chris Cooper that Tiant never saw his parents in their native Cuba again, although it’s only near the end of Hock’s documentary when one discovers that he did see them before they died … in the United States.

In the mid-1970s Castro himself allowed Tiant’s parents to come to the U.S. to see their son play at Fenway Park and to stay as long as they wished. In one of the film’s most buoyant moments we see Luis Sr. tossing out the first ball at Fenway in a game pitched by his son.

In fact, Tiant’s parents stayed in the United States more than 18 months and saw him pitch in the 1975 World Series against Cincinnati. Later they both died here within days of each other, something which leads to the film’s most poignant and emotional moments as Tiant recounts that dreadful time to one of his aunts in Havana while she offers him sympathy and consolation. It’s actually the high point of Lost Son of Havana, which intercuts newsreel footage of Tiant’s baseball career with his journey back to the place he still calls “my country,” even though much of it has become alien to him.

He visits the house where he grew up in Havana and visits with relatives, sometimes dropping in unannounced. He visits the brother of former teammate Tony Oliva, who stayed in Cuba to play baseball, and to discuss the divergent ways their lives turned.

We see his several comebacks and hear testimony of Tiant’s greatness from former Red Sox stars Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski. We see him sauntering over to a Havana park where the locals hang out to talk baseball and watch their reactions when one of the film crew tells them Tiant is standing behind them.

We see him at the high points of his career and the low points as Tiant tries to get back into the major leagues after being shipped to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm team in Portland, Ore. And he made that comeback … twice!

Hock tells us two stories with his film — Tiant’s trip to the past and Tiant’s own past in baseball. Fortunately, Tiant is a very engaging and colorful character who takes us along for the ride.

****The Lost Son of Havana

Featuring: Luis Tiant.

Rated: Not rated.

mjanuson@projo.com