SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Nolan Arenado wasn’t sure what he would find if he went to Cuba.

“I’ve always wanted to go, you know?” the Rockies’ star third baseman said. “It was more than I ever imagined.”

He saw the country where his father lived as a child. He played baseball on city streets, just like his father had more than 50 years ago. He heard stories about the infamous prison where his grandfather was held as a political prisoner. He marveled at the centuries-old Spanish architecture, the gorgeous beaches and the aquamarine Caribbean Sea. But he became dispirited at the ramshackle condition of villages in the country.

He was there when Fidel Castro, the powerful Cuban despot, died Nov. 25 at age 90, ending a long, tumultuous chapter in the country’s history.

Arenado passed out ballcaps, T-shirts and other Rockies swag. He gave a little boy a new soccer ball and then watched as the boy burst into tears of joy as he clutched his new possession.

“It was,” Arenado said, “a life-changing experience.”

With historic tension between the United States and Cuba easing in recent years, and diplomatic relations restored, a door had opened to visit. Arenado’s father, Fernando, initially had mixed feelings about returning to the country of his birth, a place he had not seen since he was six years old when his family fled Castro’s dictatorship. Fernando also wanted to make sure his mother, Marta, had a chance to visit her homeland again.

“My mom is getting older now — she’s 83 — and she wanted to go back to see where she was born and see old family and cousins,” Fernando said. “She wanted that chance. We wanted to give it to her.”

But it was Arenado’s mother, Millie, born in Queens, N.Y., but with deep family roots in Puerto Rico, who pushed to make the trip a reality. Eventually, 24 members of the Arenado clan joined the journey, driving across Cuba in three rented, silver, Chinese-made touring vans. A 643-mile, roughshod journey from Havana to the city of Guantanamo, over crumbling highways and narrow side roads, took more than three days. The roads were so bad the group didn’t drive at night. They instead stayed in small towns.

All told, Arenado was in Cuba for 10 days while most of the rest of the group stayed for 15.

“I knew Nolan wanted this badly; he wanted to go with our whole family,” Millie said. “So I pushed for all of us to go. I thought the trip would change all the kids for the better. I thought, ‘It will make them appreciate not only their Latin roots, but what a a privilege it is to live in our own country.’ ”

The timing of the trip coincided with Arenado’s contract negotiations with the Rockies. About a month and a half after returning, Arenado signed a two-year, $29.5 million contract.

“I’m so proud to be an American, but you see what they are going through Cuba, you see what they have been through, and it’s pretty sad,” Arenado said. “I mean, I can do whatever I want to in this country. But those people are kind of trapped.

“I mean, here, we get bent out of shape when our iPhones don’t work, or we obsess over the latest athletic shoes. But those people have nothing compared to us. America is the greatest country in the world, but the Cuban people are great. … They’re beautiful, warm people. It puts it all into perspective. I know I should thank God for what I have.”

The family pilgrimage to Cuba, however, stirred up heartbreaking memories.

Revisiting the past

Gerardo Arenado, the family patriarch, had worked hard to establish a thriving business in Guantanamo, a city near the famous U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. He owned and operated a thriving social club.

“It was a place where people came for banquets and weddings,” Fernando Arenado recalled. “It was kind of like a country club, only without the golf course.”

But when Castro seized power in 1959 and the Communists took over, Gerardo saw his business seized.

“We went back to see the club my dad once ran,” Fernando said. “The walls are still standing, but it’s in ruins. It looked like a bomb hit it. It was really sad. When my mom saw it, she started crying.”

The trip was hard on Marta, both physically and emotionally, especially when the family stood outside the towering walls of the Boniato, a prison where torture and deplorable conditions have long drawn condemnation from human rights groups around the world.

Poet-writer and Latin-American activist Armando Valladares, who was imprisoned 22 years for his outspoken opposition to Castro’s communism, wrote a book about his experiences. Published in 1986, “Against All Hope” recounted the indignities suffered by political prisoners in Cuba. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he described the conditions at Boniato.

“There are very narrow cells, about six feet long, that contain five or six prisoners,” Valladares said. “Prisoners had to sit with their knees against their body. There was no room to move; prisoners had to urinate and defecate right there.”

Before his death in 1994, Gerardo discussed his time in prison with his son.

“He said it was very rough,” Fernando recalled. “They separated the real, criminal prisoners from the political prisoners. My father tried to get along with everybody, and he tried to make them feel safe and comfortable when they came into prison. He said he helped protect them from the regular criminals.”

According to Fernando, his father was not a hard-core political activist. He didn’t like the right-wing, authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, but he feared the incoming Castro regime.

“Somebody ratted my dad out,” Gerardo said. “He was on a list of names that Castro’s military found in the possession of a person involved with the rebels — men leading a revolt against the Castro regime.

“He eventually got released, after almost three years in that prison. He went back to his business but they pretty much said, ‘We own it now. If you want to work for us, you can.’ But he told them to shove it. So he lost his business. But my dad was very fortunate to get out of prison when he did, because a lot of prisoners he knew served more than 20 or 25 years. Some were executed.”

Escaping Cuba

Fernando said his father was blocked from moving to the United States, as so many Cubans were in the initial exodus during the 1960s. Instead, the family was only allowed to escape to Spain, where it remained for nearly a year until Fernando, his twin brother Gerardo and a 14-year-old cousin were granted visas to enter the U.S. The three boys joined an aunt in Southern California.

“What would my dad think about us coming back here? That’s the million-dollar question,” Gerardo said. “We all had different feelings when we were there. It was emotional. But I think my dad would have wanted to go back. He’s not the kind of man who had a lot of hatred in his heart. He would have said, ‘Let’s go back.’ ”

Nolan Arenado is sure he wants to return to Cuba, but not because a few kids recognized him as a major-league all-star and called him a baseball “monstruo” — Spanish for monster or beast.

“It’s an unbelievable country,” he said. “It’s very old school. You feel like you are living back in the 1950s. The cars are old, nothing is updated. It’s kind of crazy. And the people are beautiful too. Kind of quiet and a little sad, but so warm.”

Fernando said the Cubans have the spirit of “luchando” — “the struggle to survive, but with knowledge they will make it through.”

The Rockies’ third baseman is already making plans to spread his love of baseball to as many Cuban kids as he can.

“It’s not that baseball is dying out in Cuba, they love the sport,” Millie said. “But you can have just one soccer ball and a bunch of kids can play. But in baseball, those kids can’t afford to have all of the equipment. That’s one of the reasons Nolan wants to go back. He’s going to take balls and glove and cleats and bats. Even uniforms, if he can.”

Said Arenado: “It is something I want to do. I would love to play a game there someday. Cuba is part of who I am. It is my family’s homeland.”