In early 2015, shortly after President Barack Obama announced that the USA would move to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba, I visited the island. I met a family obsessed with baseball and wrote a story about how the changing politics of the island have affected the Cuban baseball leagues that are so important to so many people on the island.
Here’s an excerpt:
Adalberto Fernandez has not missed a Pinar del Rio game in as long as he can remember.
This January night, he’s watching del Rio take on the Cuban League’s most talented baseball squad, Matanzas, in the third and final game of a midseason series. He’s flanked by family on all sides. His father, Papa, is in the rocking chair to his left. To his right, slouched against the wall, are his sons Carlos, 21, and Ariel, 20. They are huddled around Fernandez’s 30-inch Panasonic flat screen. He bought it a year ago, for 700 pesos, roughly nine months of paychecks.
Fernandez makes the half-hour drive from his home in Viñales, in western Cuba, to Pinar del Rio to watch his team in person every time he can. He had to work late today, keeping the books for the local cabaret, and he has to get to work early tomorrow.
He and his family are absorbed by the game. Passersby stop at the window to sneak a peak of the screen, but they are another speck of dust unnoticed. On the floor lies a copy of the Cuban newspaper Granma. The front page applauds news that Venezuela will celebrate José Marti, Cuba’s George Washington; the headline on page four reads, “Obama pide al Congreso poner fin al bloqueo.” Obama asks Congress to put an end to the embargo.
Fernandez, now in his mid 40s, looks nothing like the bubbly twenty-year old marrying his wife, Sonia, in the picture on the wall. His hair has faded from jet black to gray. His mustache is gone. His eyes are heavier, weighed down by gravity, by all they have seen.
Dainer Moreira, Matanzas’ shortstop is batting.
“[Moreira] is a grand ballplayer,” Fernandez says. “It’s a pleasure to watch him play the game, and since he’s older [30], we don’t have to worry about him leaving for the majors.”
Two weeks later, while travelling with the Cuban national team for a tournament in Puerto Rico, Moreira left the team hotel, defecting and launching himself on the path towards a Major League contract.
With Moreira was Valdimir Gutierrez, the 19-year old ace of Pinar del Rio.
Moreira and Gutierrez highlight the growing problem in Cuba’s leagues. Lured by fame and freedom and fortune, Cuba’s baseball stars defect with dreams of playing in America. Cuba’s premier club, Havana’s Industriales are often called the Yankees of Cuba, but it’s a worthless comparison. The Yankees are a professional team, while Industriales are amateur; they don’t have lucrative sponsorships and TV deals. In communist Cuba, ballgames don’t have commercials.
With news of the U.S. and Cuba normalizing relations, Cuban baseball is at the precipice of a titanic shift. “If Cuban players can freely sign with Americans, will there even be a Cuban league?”
