SPORTS-CUBA: Baseball Victory Buoys a Suffering Nation

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 20 2001 (IPS) - The victory of Cuba’s national team over the United States in the baseball World Cup triggered prolonged celebrations that have led Cubans to forget, at least for the time being, about the devastation caused earlier this month by Hurricane Michelle and the island’s deepening economic crisis.

Cuba won the championship Sunday, a year after losing the gold medal to the same rival at the Olympic Games in Sydney Australia. Baseball is the most popular sport in Cuba, so much so, that it is simply referred to as “pelota” (ball).

“A tremendous game!” yells a fan to make himself heard above the crowd that gathers regularly at the so-called “hot corner” at a park in central Havana. It is the site of an ongoing baseball discussion that has no fixed agenda or set participants.

More than 100 people, mostly men, could be seen both Sunday and Monday, nearly until nightfall, sharing their analyses of each play in the final game played in Taipei, which ended with five runs for Cuba and three for the United States.

“Baseball is like the air we breathe,” one fan told IPS in an attempt to explain the importance of the sport in a country that is still suffering from the impact of Hurricane Michelle, which thrashed the island Nov 4, and awaiting announcement of the economic measures aimed at confronting the crisis.

“The only toy I have kept since my childhood is the baseball glove my father gave me, which had belonged to my grandfather. I have been playing ball since I was five,” said Roberto Conde, 47, an engineer.

Cubans – of any age – need only a ball and a bat to play baseball, which they do on any street, in any park or vacant lot. In their opinion, the only worthy adversaries for the Cuban players are the teams from the United States.

Ever since the triumph of the Fidel Castro-led revolution on Jan 1, 1959, and the subsequent break in diplomatic ties with the United States, every baseball game between the two countries has also been a sort of political battle.

But the rivalry dates back to 1939, when Cuba won the first baseball game that pit the two countries against each other.

Since that era, Cuba has won 23 of the 26 baseball world cups in which it participated, and on 21 occasions it has faced the United States in the championship game. The Cuban nation team has played 258 games in international tournaments and has lost just 29.

“We study every trait of our opponents. It is the best thing a pitcher can do to help his team,” said Cuba’s José Ariel Contreras, the pitcher chosen at the Taipei tournament to lead the All-Star team.

Terry Francona, manager of the US team, admitted that he had not seen the Cubans play during the tournament, so he was not up on their strengths and weaknesses. He said he had told his players to “play the game correctly and we’ll see what happens.”

Baseball fan Conde said he expected the Cuban victory, but that he had also had some doubts. He is celebrating now, however, and says “this is the end of the crisis that Cuban baseball has been suffering since the mid-1990s.”

In the past few years, several Cuban players have emigrated to the United States for million-dollar contracts, others have retired early, and some began to show apathy when it came time to play. And there was a period when the stadiums were nearly empty because the games had become too boring to attract the sport’s millions of fans.

With that history, Humberto Rodríguez, head of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), said the victory in Taipei is a “confirmation of the quality” of Cuban baseball and the result of months of effort to reinforce the country’s entire baseball system.

But sources close to INDER say the real turning point came two years ago when the government created a commission with a mandate to take care of the baseball players and their families.

This “special attention” has come in the form of salary hikes, bonuses in US dollars paid upon return from international competitions, improvements in housing and the facilitation of car purchases, transactions that are strictly regulated by the government.

These incentives represent a shift in Cuba’s official sports policy, which has been based on ensuring the population has access to participating in sports and on promoting amateur competition, independent of material interests.

In Cuba, anyone meeting the minimum requirements has the right to free admission to the country’s sports schools. The government budgets 130 million dollars annually for a system that ranges from physical education classes in primary schools to high-performance training centres.

The first results of this policy were evident at the 1974 Central American Games, in Santo Domingo, where Cuba, for the first time, took home more than 100 gold medals.

In a century of Olympic Games (1896-1996), Cuba was the Latin American leader in the medal count, with 44 gold, 32 silver and 31 bronze, followed by Argentina (11, 20 and 15, respectively) and Brazil (11, 13 and 27).

At the Sydney Olympics last year, Cuba was ninth in the medal tally, with 11 gold, 11 silver and seven bronze. Following far behind were Brazil (six of each), Mexico (one gold, two silver and three bronze) and Argentina (two silver and two bronze).

Cuba’s role in world sports has also expanded through its initiatives in other countries. Over the last 30 years, more than 9,000 sports experts and coaches have worked with athletes in 97 countries, mostly in the developing South.

José Ramón Fernandez, vice-president of the government’s Council of Ministers and head of the Cuban Olympic Committee, defends the island’s aspiration to host the 2008 Olympic Games, and told IPS that it is more a problem of conception than of money.