Red Sox legend Tiant introduces name brand cigars to South Shore

El Tiante...looking to the sky as frilly tobacco-specific nitrosamines float about.

“Louis is known for two things, playing baseball and smoking cigars,” said Anderson, the company’s vice president and CFO. “There’s almost a built-in market for the cigar here.”

But that’s not to say the famed Sox hurler is resting on his name to sell the product. Instead the “23 Series,” the company’s introductory cigar named in honor of Tiant’s old number, was meticulously crafted and fashioned to Tiant’s liking. A mild cigar, the 23, like all other El Tiante brands, is hand crafted in Nicaragua and boasts its own unique flavor.

“It’s the kind of cigar I would like to smoke,” Tiant said. “I didn’t want to put my name to something that wasn’t a good product. It’s a good cigar.”

And if there is one thing Luis Tiant knows a thing or two about beyond baseball, it’s a good cigar. An avid cigar lover and smoker since he was 17, Tiant has always boasted cigars as his second love. “I think I had my first one in 1958,” he recalled. “I quit a few times, a year here or a few years there, but I always loved to smoke cigars. I never liked cigarettes, only cigars.”