Stairway to Havana – Softball Diplomacy and Yankee Perspective (Part 1)

Arriving in the Capital

The overnight flight from Cancun to Havana was aboard an Aero Mexico Dutch-built Fokker-100 airliner that had probably been in service since the late 1980s. It was spacious and quiet, plus it had a new feature for this air traveler. About 45 minutes into the 1 hour flight, a bilingual announcement readied passengers to approach and then something was said about “fumigation” that I didn’t understand. I asked a fellow passenger what that meant and before he could answer, I saw other passengers trying to cover their noses and mouths with shirt collars, scarves and hands as a dense chemical fog sprayed us from the compartments. superiors. It seems that the Cuban government has insisted that any cargo coming from Mexico must be sprayed with disinfectant before it is allowed to land. Apparently passengers are also considered cargo.

None of us knew what to expect when our group of 24 Americans arrived bug-eyed and germ-free at Havana’s José Martí airport around 11 p.m. local time. The 20-minute bus ride to the hotel didn’t reveal much in the way of views or scenery; the city was dimly lit with only a scattering of functional sodium streetlights. What could be clearly seen through the bus windows, however, were the billboards and murals, all brightly painted slogans proclaiming the blessings of Unity, the Party, Socialism, and the Revolution. Was it by design that even in the final hours, when everything was dark and boarded up, the message of “The Revolution” could still be seen so clearly in the dimly lit streets?

The hotel we stayed in was rated four star and the exterior and lobby looked clean and modern, but a trip to the room revealed worn and stained carpets, patched and unpainted walls, and the unmistakable smell of mildew. The constant water pressure in the building was hit and miss and the bed was hard as a picnic table, but other than that the rooms were comfortable. After an 18-hour travel day, I spent my first night in Havana in peaceful sleep.

The next morning, looking out of the third-floor window, I was startled to see how close Old Havana seemed, almost in ruins. In every direction I saw buildings blackened by decades of mold, in various states of decay or near collapse and still inhabited. Clothes were hung to dry on makeshift clotheslines from balconies of buildings that would otherwise appear abandoned or dilapidated. It took me a minute to understand what I was looking at: this was the capital of a nation in which no pre-1959 non-governmental city structure had been repaired, washed down, or even marginally maintained for half a century. I realized that it was a long way from Starbucks. This was Cuba. The genuine third world communist dictatorship, last vestige of the cold war, which I learned about in school, which was ruled, until recently, by the most famous (and oldest) bearded revolutionary Marxist in the world, old Fidel. . I suspected as I looked at the spectacular but dilapidated architecture, that in my amazement and excitement in the weeks leading up to this trip, I might have romanticized this adventure too much. And not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into here gave my stomach an unwanted churning. As I looked down the narrow side street where a morning line of shoppers formed in front of a dingy little market, I wondered if I’d be back at the airport tomorrow, dragging my privileged gringo ass back to California. I’m sorry I traveled to this depressing place. But, fortunately, this gloomy first impression would turn out to be just misplaced apprehension on my part and would soon dissolve. I would quickly find a comfort zone in this foreign environment and instead of my misgivings, I would form an amazing perspective and an indelible impression of a country and a people.

softball diplomacy

He was entering Cuba as a member of the USA/Cuba Senior Softball team made up of 13 “Senior” players ranging from the youngest (58 years of age) to the oldest (76). We were scheduled to play a series of 4 games against high level Cuban counterparts. At the time of our visit, there was no Senior Softball League in Cuba, so we didn’t know exactly who or how many different teams we would be playing or under what playing conditions. We’d find out when we got there. The tour was organized as a sort of goodwill venture formed by the late Bob Weinstein, then president of USA-Cuba, LLC and founder of USA-Cuba Sports Experiences. Bob had brought other US softball teams to Cuba before his untimely death last year at age 66, but this was the first “senior” team to be formed solely for the purpose of traveling to Cuba to play softball. We were not an All-Star team by any means, but simply a collection of softball fans with the time, inclination and finances to make the trip. The team held a practice or two before we left, but we realized that we understood more about an ambassador trip than a competitive softball team. Our group managed to pack an additional 250 pounds of clothing, medicine, and personal items that we planned to distribute while we were there, making this trip a combination of hurricane relief and sports adventure.

For our first game, we disembarked from our bus at the “Sports Practice Field” next to the Juan Ealo Stadium on the outskirts of Havana and walked across a vacant lot to the softball field. Most of the activity in the park came to a halt and locals looked at the Americans as we silently traversed the two hundred yards to the visitors’ bench wearing our USA-Cuba hats and jerseys and carrying our gear bags. The Cuban team was warming up when we arrived and looked at us suspiciously. We put big eager smiles on our faces and quickly introduced ourselves, posed together for pictures and expressed our gratitude and pleasure to be a part of this event. When they saw that we were more interested in friendship and camaraderie than fierce competition, the nervousness and collective reluctance we detected quickly transformed into sympathy and enthusiasm. A ceremony of sorts was held before the first game and an official from the Cuban Softball Federation spoke describing this occasion as an important step in continued goodwill between the sporting countries. They gave us Cuban Olympic pins in exchange for the commemorative pins we gave them. We felt a genuine camaraderie between us and the Cubans and we could tell by the smiles and expressions we saw on their faces that they felt it too.

We learned that the Cuban team we would be playing against had been hastily assembled as senior softball was still unknown in Cuba. In fact, the idea of ​​a league made up of players past their prime was… well, alien to them. From their appearance, they resembled a motley crew of elderly Cubans, some in uniforms they must have kept from the 1960s and 1970s, judging by their worn and faded conditions. Not everyone had baseball gloves or bats, so we shared what we had and did these gear swaps between innings.

As the Cubans took to the field, any notion that they might be dismissed as competitors quickly faded. They executed sharply and fundamentally on the field, made few mistakes defensively and obviously took pride in their performance. A missed shot or missed cut would incur the wrath of the other players. We later learned that most of the team members played organized baseball in Cuba at some point in their youth and some of them even made it to the Cuban National Team. Baseball it is the national sport in Cuba, far above soccer in participation and interest. The game itself is a favorite topic for lively debate in city parks and baseball season is followed with nationalist fervor, so this dedication to the sport was reflected in the Cubans’ game. We had four games scheduled but only played three because Hurricane Paloma crossed the center of the island during our visit bringing rain and winds to the western tip of Cuba, causing one of our contests to be cancelled. We were outscored in all three games, but the scores were respectable by slow-pitch standards and seemed unimportant given the unprecedented circumstances. After the last game, our organizers arranged for a few cases of beer to be delivered to our dugout, an act that is strictly prohibited under normal circumstances, but on this occasion, the ordinance was apparently broken, and we all stood and laughed. , we had some cold ones, posed for more photos and exchanged uniform shirts, wristbands, gloves, hats and other memorabilia. Two of the players I met had brought programs from international competitions where they had played as youngsters. It was all they had to share with us and it was very moving to receive something that was clearly very dear to them. I asked the Cuban players to autograph the inside covers of those programs and they were all very happy to do so. In this amazing atmosphere of fraternity and respect, one had a sense of what ‘normal’ relations between US citizens and Cubans might look like, if the political chasm between us were somehow to disappear.

After our series on the field, the Cuban Softball Federation met with officials from the US Senior Softball Association who had joined us on the trip and together they discussed the possibilities of forming a Senior League in Cuba. We were happy to think that our trip and experience could be the necessary springboard in the formation of a league for these wonderful Cuban players. As a result, the Cuban Federation later announced that the first annual US-Cuba Senior Softball Classic will be played in Havana next year, featuring the four new Cuban Senior Softball teams that have been formed. So it seems that the League-Of-Their-Own idea has become a reality for some seniors. Cubans like they go back out on the field to play softball, or they say in Cuba: “The Big Balls.”