El Pasatiempo Nacional
Though it’s the same game, baseball in Cuba is radically
different from the American version
By Eric Enders
May 2001
Imagine a world where baseball is played just for the fun
of it. A place where world-class players walk or ride their bikes to the
ballpark, and know the fans by their first names. A place where some of the best
baseball in the world is played, with no luxury boxes, no owners, no MasterCard
commercials and, above all, no labor conflicts.
Such a place exists in Cuba, only 90 miles off the U.S.
coast, where many of the world’s best players play baseball not for money or
fame, but for love of their country and the game itself. It is a place where
baseball has been played for nearly 150 years, and where the great ballgames of
years past still inhabit the country’s collective memory. It has played host
to Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige and Cal Ripken, and has also produced the likes
of Martín Dihigo and Omar Linares, equally great players whose feats are
little-known outside of this 720-mile long island.
The
best place in Cuba to discuss baseball is the esquina caliente, or hot
corner, located in a Havana park just across the street from the capitol
building. There, under a statue of national patriarch José Martí, dozens of
men congregate daily to argue about both Cuban and American baseball. Some are
members of the Peña, a national association of diehard baseball fans,
but most are simply casual fans coming and going as the day unfolds. Many have
followed baseball since before the Revolution, when players like Josh Gibson and
Babe Ruth spent their off-seasons playing winter ball on the island. Among these
elder statesmen is Marcelo Sánchez (picture at left),
one of four Cuban members of the Society for American Baseball Research, who
proudly displays his SABR membership card for anyone who asks. On this day, he
is arguing with a fellow fan about whether Dizzy Dean or Sandy Koufax was a
better pitcher. They are shouting in order to hear each other over the dozens of
other animated baseball conversations taking place. “Fue loco” – he
was crazy – Sánchez says of Dean, and that ends this particular argument.
Koufax wins. Sánchez now moves on to the next issue at hand, this time
speculating on how Orestes Kindelán, the Cuban league’s lifetime home run
leader, might fare in the major leagues. This and a dozen other frantic
conversations continue past sundown, a surreal symphony of shouting about the
national game.
Baseball is virtually the only aspect of U.S. culture
embraced by the Cuban Revolution, an enterprise based largely on resisting
American imperialism. While the sport has long been an indispensable part of
both cultures, its meaning in Cuba has changed profoundly since the onset of
Fidel Castro’s government. Communist ideals dictate that many of the aspects
most Americans find distasteful about baseball – agents, high salaries, labor
conflicts, team owners, and, above all, greed – no longer exist in Cuban
baseball. The ballparks are named after national heroes, not multinational
corporations. To Cubans, baseball is not a business. It is a passion, and it is
run by the government not as a money-making enterprise, but as a public service.
Things have not always been this way, of course. Before the
1959 Revolution, a thriving professional winter league played host to major
league players looking for good times, warm weather, and a little extra income.
Because it was integrated long before the majors, the Cuban league also
attracted Negro Leaguers trying to escape the racism of the United States. Cuban
baseball in its current form began in 1962, when the government disbanded the
professional league. In a Communist society professional sports represented, as
one magazine put it, “a form of the exploitation of man by man: Athletes were
sold and traded like simple merchandise.” Taking the place of professionalism
was a purely amateur league, called the National Series, which increased the
number of teams and took baseball to the rural provinces that had previously
been neglected. There are now 16 teams in the National Series: one from each
Cuban province, plus two more representing the city of Havana.
Like early baseball in the United States, the teams truly represent their regions: each player plays for his home province, cheered on from the stands by friends and family. There are no trades, no free agents, and, unless a player changes his residency, no movement from team to team. Because even the best players are not treated much differently than the average citizen, they seem more accessible and down-to-earth than American professionals. Cuban players banter with the fans, many ride their bicycles to the ballpark and, if they’re lucky, they might return home at night carrying a plucked chicken or two as a reward for a good game.
Sigfredo Barros is the owner of one of the best jobs in
Cuba. He is the baseball writer for Granma, the national newspaper. Every
night he attends whatever game is taking place at Havana’s massive Estadio
Latinoamericano, while phone reports from other provinces trickle in throughout
the evening. At the end of the night he condenses everything into one
comprehensive story, which must be brief because, with a severe paper shortage
in Cuba, most issues of Granma are limited to eight pages. In the last
several years his job has taken him many places, including Atlanta for the 1996
Olympics and Baltimore for the 1999 Orioles game against the Cuban national
team. He has never thought of defecting because he loves his job, and his
country, too much. “I love baseball,” he says. “I love baseball.
When I was a child, the first thing my father gave me was a bat and a ball. I
was never very good as a player, but I have always loved the game.”
At Nelson Fernández Stadium, named for a hero of the Bay
of Pigs invasion, baseball fields and playgrounds surround the concrete stadium,
as youngsters practice the skills they’ll need to make it to the National
Series. Before entering the ballpark, I play catch for half an hour with a
12-year-old boy named Yuriel, who is borrowing a glove from a friend. He throws
well, and he says his dream is to make the Olympic Team in a few years. As it
happens, this stadium in rural Havana province is also the site of one of
Cuba’s elite baseball academies, where students spend their mornings
perfecting reading and writing skills, and their afternoons learning how to hit
the cutoff man. Talented youngsters are identified at an early age, and the most
promising are enrolled in this academy by the time they are 17. A few years
later, with luck, they might join one of the Cuban league teams or, even better,
the Olympic squad.
Most
of the time, the stadium (picture, left) is
home to the Havana province club, a talented Cuban league team which will finish
the season tied for first place in its division. The provincial park is one of
the smallest in the league, seating about 4,000 fans. It is one-third full
tonight for a game against Ciego de Ávila, with another 150 or so people
crowding along the outer fence so they can avoid the one-peso admission charge
(equivalent to five American cents). Outfield walls in Cuban parks do not bear
advertising, but instead are usually decorated with colorful patriotic slogans.
“Participatory sports are the wellspring of champions,” reads one sign in
right field. A fair number of fans sport t-shirts bearing the likeness of Che
Guevara, the national hero who was instrumental in, as it is called here, The
Triumph of the Revolution. Appropriately enough, since carreras means
“runs” in Spanish, the letters atop the scoreboard’s line score – which
would read “RHE” in the U.S. – spells “CHE” in Cuba. Here an
electronic scoreboard has replaced the old hand-operated one, but since there is
an electricity shortage on the island, the hitter’s name is flashed only
briefly as he comes up to bat. Because the teenagers are too busy playing
baseball outside the park, old men called carga bates serve as batboys
– although they seem to spend more time dispensing hitting advice than
collecting bats. At sundown, play is interrupted so the flag in center field can
be lowered, and everyone stands at attention while the national anthem plays.
The game soon resumes, and more fans trickle into the ballpark as the innings
roll on. They are more boisterous and knowledgeable than American fans, and with
no dot races or sales pitches to distract them, they follow the game closely,
hanging on every pitch. At the seventh inning stretch there is no singing, but
instead a young woman takes a tray of coffee and juice out to the umpires. There
are no concession stands here, but an elderly man roams the stands with a
thermos full of rich Cuban espresso, selling tiny cups of the stuff for a peso.
Another man sells paper cones full of hand-roasted peanuts; another sells
popsicles.
Back in Havana, wearing a cool white guayabera shirt
and smoking a cigar that looks bigger than he is, 90-year-old Conrado Marrero
leans back in his poolside chair. One of the first Cubans to pitch in the major
leagues, Marrero was one of dozens of Cuban players signed for the Washington
Senators by scout Joe Cambria in the 1950s – the first large influx of
foreigners to arrive in major league baseball. Though he didn’t reach the
majors until a week before his 39th birthday, Marrero lasted parts of
five seasons as a junkball pitcher with the Senators, winning 39 games and even
making an all-star team. He is one of the few ex-major leaguers who still makes
his home in Cuba, and like many Havanans, he lives in a modest dwelling that has
not seen repairs since the 1950s. These days he serves as the unofficial
patriarch of Cuban baseball, appearing at awards ceremonies and important games
to tell tales and have his picture taken. Today he is sipping a mojito, a
Cuban rum-and-mint drink, as he shares his memories with a group of visitors
from Cubaball Tours, a company that arranges travel to Cuba for American and
Canadian baseball fans. Marrero enjoys telling stories about Ted Williams, who
he remembers facing in a clutch situation late in the 1953 season. “I threw
him a 3-and-2 knuckleball and he struck out,” Marrero says. “I didn’t
strike him out; he struck himself out. He was the one swinging the bat. We won
the game 5 to 4.” Marrero has not seen his old rival in almost 50 years, but
he recently watched a videotape of the frail Williams throwing out the first
pitch at the 1999 All-Star Game. “If you see him,” Marrero tells the group
of Americans, “tell him I send my regards.”
In Pinar del Río, the rural province where most of the
country’s tobacco is grown, residents roll the famous Cuban cigars during the
day and follow the fortunes of their beloved baseball team at night. A perennial
power in the Cuban league, the Pinar team features Omar Linares, the foremost
player in the history of international baseball, and Yosvany Peraza, a powerful
young catcher whose body and bat resemble Roy Campanella’s. The star of
Cuba’s powerhouse Olympic squad for more than a decade, Linares is a genuinely
great player who is probably, along with the likes of Mike Schmidt and George
Brett, one of the best half-dozen third basemen in baseball history. Using an
aluminum bat for most of his Cuban league career, he has posted a lifetime .366
batting average, and is approaching 400 home runs despite the league’s short
seasons. He is no longer the player he once was, but the 34-year-old Linares
still managed to hit a Brett-like .390 this season, his 18th year in
the league.
Like many of his countrymen, Linares is somewhat suspicious
of foreigners. Often the only Americans the Cuban players have ever met are
agents or scouts trying to convince them to defect. Though Linares has had
countless opportunities to turn pro, he has resisted the temptation of major
league riches because, he says, he finds playing for his country more rewarding.
In fact, many Cubans understandably take offense at the suggestion that their
players are missing out on something by not playing in the major leagues.
American fans may find it hard to accept the notion that there are top-flight
baseball players in the world who don’t aspire to the major leagues, but for
every Orlando Hernández who flees Cuba for the majors, there are many more like
Linares who have turned down the opportunity to defect in order to play at home.
Two
elderly men in center field have seen every home game Linares has ever played,
though they have never bought a ticket. Rolando Castillo and Julio Hernández
are Pinar del Río’s pizarristas, or scoreboard operators, and together
they have been controlling the manually operated scoreboard at Capitán San Luis
Stadium for 35 years. Like Quasimodo in his bell tower, they sit in the dark at
the top of a massive, empty structure, peering out at the bright world around
them. Inhabiting the third floor of the hulking, dusty scoreboard, they watch
the game through holes in the wood while a radio beside them crackles with the
play-by-play in case they miss something. Hernández handles the line score,
while Castillo maintains the balls and strikes. At each turn of events they
crank a heavy steel handle that rotates the proper numeral into place. Like an
old married couple, each knows the other’s movements like clockwork, and
despite the monotony and loneliness of the work, there is nothing else on earth
they would rather be doing. Their biggest fear is the electronic scoreboard,
which they know already exists at many Cuban stadiums. Although they do not know
when it will arrive, they know that, sooner or later, newer technology will push
them out of their jobs. “It is a curse upon us,” Castillo says, staring
wistfully into the distance.
On a sunny Havana street, a few yards away from the crashing waves of the Caribbean, a dozen youngsters (picture, right) play a stickball game called cuatras esquinas (four corners). The ball is a rock wrapped in white medical tape, about half the size of a regulation baseball. The bat is a tree branch; there are no gloves. There’s also no baserunning – either you hit the ball over everyone’s head, or you’re out. If a car speeds by, play stops while the fielders scurry for the safety of the sidewalk. Such pickup games can be found on virtually every street corner in the island. This is where boys hone their batting skills in hope that they will eventually be chosen for one of the prestigious baseball academies, then maybe the National Series, and perhaps eventually, the Olympics. Most of them know they will never make it that far, but it doesn’t bother them. They are busy enjoying themselves, catching and running and hitting, with the sea breeze blowing through their hair and the afternoon sun warming their shoulders. What could be better?
Although U.S. law makes it illegal for most Americans to travel in Cuba, thousands of citizens each year disobey this law and visit Cuba as an act of civil disobedience. All travel must go through a third country such as Mexico or Canada. If you are a baseball fan and would like more information on visiting Cuba, contact Cubaball Tours. To learn more about the U.S. blockade and what you can do to help end it, visit the Cuba Solidarity website.
All photographs by Eric Enders, ©2001. Click here for more information and for larger versions of the photos. Please e-mail the author with your comments about this story.
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