Cuba:
A Whole New Ballgame
By Jason Rezaian
Cuba’s not that different. They
like baseball and fast food just like us, I thought,
as I walked around Havana on my first afternoon there,
watching young kids play stickball and pretty teenage
girls in spandex picking at fried chicken.
I had been to Cuba several years
earlier, but it was already clear that life on the
island had changed considerably since my last trip.
Touching down at Havana’s Jose Marti International
Airport, I could already see some of the transformation.
For one thing, the flight was packed with Americans
yucking it up and drinking Cuba Libres. On
that first journey the few Americans on my flight,
and the handful I ran into on the island, were all
walking around with a perpetual look of wonder coupled
with a glance over their shoulders, knowing they weren’t
supposed to be there, and pondering how a nation so
different than our own could exist right around the
corner.
Deplaning into the brand new terminal, I felt like
I was in a modern Spanish airport dotted with little
cafes and fancy duty-free boutiques. I wasn’t prepared
for that, but tourism has become a multi-billion dollar
annual business for Castro and his cronies.
I knew that one thing would be the same though, baseball.
It couldn’t have changed, since so few tourists to
Cuba are American, and probably fewer still, Japanese.
There would have been no earthly reason for Castro
to give Cuban baseball a facelift.
In May of 1999 a team of Cuban all-stars came to America
to play the Baltimore Orioles, and I was there. Three
things struck me that day. First, the Cuban guys could
play. Their middle infielders turned some of the slickest
double plays I’ve ever seen, and they won the game
with little effort and a lot of grace. Second, was
the sense of awe in their eyes: the scoreboard and
jumbo-tron that replayed their every movement, the
throngs of people gathered to watch, some to support
them in their cause, but others who hate everything
they represented, and many more who just came to watch
a ball game. But it was the uniforms, bright red and
brand-new, that impressed me the most. This is
not the way these guys usually look for a game,
I thought, although I had no idea what they were actually
accustomed to.
So I decided that the first thing I’d do when I arrived
would be to find out what baseball in Cuba is all
about. What better way to get into the spirit of the
island than to check out a ball game? I had never
read a description of Cuban baseball before. Most
guidebooks told of the “possibility” of seeing a game,
or referred to it as some esoteric ritual, uninteresting
to the tourist masses. I suppose that’s because most
people writing guidebooks on Cuba either aren’t American
or are not addressing an American audience. I knew
better. Every afternoon in Havana’s main park, only
steps away from the nation’s capital, a replica of
our Congress building, men of all ages gather in a
place known as the Esquina Caliente (Hot
Corner) to discuss and argue all matters relevant
to the game. Flanked by vintage American cars from
an era long gone, it’s here that I first realized
that Cuba is a kind of parallel universe; diametrically
opposed to all things American except the
pillars of our civilization: cars, baseball, fast
food and dollars.
I decided to check out an exhibition game at the Estadio
Latinoamericacano, between Cienfuegos and Sancti
Spiritus, Cuba’s version of the Milwaukee Brewers
versus the Detroit Tigers. The stadium is removed
from the central part of Havana, so I grabbed a cab
from the Esquina Caliente with a friend named
Alfredo. We rode in a sky-blue Chevy from the mid-1950’s
that coughed and stalled the whole ride to the ballpark,
arriving a few minutes before game time. Upon entering
the stadium, I immediately noticed the foul poles,
lit up in bright, neon pink. Cuba, above all else,
is a colorful place from the spandex hugging the butts
of ladies aged six to sixty, to the foul poles in
the world’s oldest ballpark.
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