Boston Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell, saying that ailing Cuban dictator is responsible for the deaths of members of his family, said “I hope he does die” Tuesday night, the Boston Herald said.

“Castro killed members of my family,” Lowell told the Herald before the game against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway.

News reports have said Castro, nearly 80 years old, is gravely ill after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. He handed power temporarily to his brother, Raul Castro.

“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,” said Lowell, 30.

“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.

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“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.”

After leaving Cuba, Lowell’s parents settled in Puerto Rico, where Lowell was born in 1974.

“It’s a shame, but that country has been taken hostage for 40 years. It’s time for it to have a chance at being democratic,” Lowell said.

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Lowell said he understands why many people are celebrating the possibility of Castro's pending death.

“Reports are that Eighth Street is as crazy as when the Marlins won the World Series, and that was crazy,” Lowell said. “I think if I was watching the media and I saw that in, say, Jamaica, that they’re celebrating someone’s illness, I’d think it was kind of weird. But what you have to understand, and what hits home with me, is what my family has been through.”

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