CUBAN TRANSITIONS

My friendship with the bus driver, Duniel, began the day I wore my Industriales t-shirt. The Industriales is a Havana-based baseball team that is part of the Cuban National Series, a post-revolutionary amateur Cuban baseball league. He saw my royal blue t-shirt with a large calligraphic “I”, and said a phrase that I would hear multiple times every time I wore my industriales T-shirt, “Industriales son los yanquis (Yankees) de Cuba.” Los Industriales have consistently been the most dominant team in the league. Many of the Cuban National Series’s best players, who left Cuba to play Major League Baseball, were Industriales, such as Orlando Hernandez, who ended up playing with the New York Yankees.

Duniel was from Varadero, a heavily tourist-oriented town in the province of Matanzas. Therefore, Duniel was a fan of Los Cocodrilos, a rival team of Los Industriales. He was excited to talk smack to me  and our tour guide, Joel, a genuine Industriales fan (I am not knowledgable enough to be considered an Industriales fan. I just like the t-shirt).

Industriales’ Mascot

I was also able to listen to a bunch of guys discuss baseball in the center of Parque Central. I started to contemplate how politicized these conversations about baseball could be. As ‘academics’ with an aim to write research papers, we had a propensity to ask extremely politicized questions about Fidel, Che, conceptions of freedom, etc. However, the conversations we had were not necessarily the most genuine representation of a conversation between Cubans. Watching these fans chat about their teams, I felt I was witnessing a very special scene. The scene was transnational; it was not steeped in propagandistic rhetoric. The language of sports that I heard was universal. It was a language that allowed me to form connections with friends like Duniel. It was the same rhetoric I used back home to diss the Red Sox and fantasize about the Yankees winning a 28th World Championship.

Photograph I took of Cubans Discussing Baseball in Parque Central.

I recognized the transnational character of baseball in Cuba in other embodiments other than language. I knew that sports such as baseball presented athletes with an opportunity to leave Cuba. Wikipedia has a list of all the Cuban baseball players that played in the MLB (American baseball league). Foreign baseball leagues such as the MLB offer a particularly attractive incentive for Cuban baseball players to defect because of the extremely high salaries. Orlando Hernandez, a defected Cuban Baseball player, was given a 4-year $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees in 1999. By 2008, Hernandez was being paid $7 million for a single season. In addition, there are several international baseball competitions that give Cuban baseball players to travel outside of their island, a privilege given the expense of traveling. Cuba’s National Baseball team has competed in both the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic Tournament.

After returning to Vassar College, I was walking down the quad with my Industriales t-shirt. I was surprisingly stopped by someone who recognized the Industriales. This moment was a reminder of how baseball can act as link between the people of different countries, in spite of antagonistic political relationships such as the Cuban-U.S relationship.

Sources:

http://www.cubanball.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/sports/baseball/13cuba.html

Wikipedia