A HOT TIME IN HAVANA : Cubans Seem to Have an Incurable Case of Baseball Fever

The home team, Ciudad Havana , has begun to rally. So what does the woman in the stands about 25 rows behind third base do?

Wait for someone with a trumpet to play an overworked ditty so she can yell, “Charge?”

Clap her hands in unison with the other fans?

Start the wave?

No, that is for North Americans who treat baseball as if it’s a game. This is her passion, beisbol . She collects the trash around her seat, mixes it with some kindling she brought for just such an occasion, sticks a match to it and starts a fire.

“I’m not writing about this,” a reporter from New York says. “It might give the fans at Shea Stadium ideas.”

Of the 51,000 people who have filled Stadio Latinoamericano for a game between Ciudad Havana , Havana City, and Maneros , the Miners, only the two dozen or so visitors from the United States who are seeing their first Cuban baseball game seem to think anything unusual is happening.

They are told not to worry, that it’s a custom for the home team’s fans to start a fire when their heroes begin to rally and that the woman will put it out as soon as Havana City is put out.

The way the Miners’ pitchers are hanging curves, that could take a while. Rome burned to the ground in less time.

Through the first five innings, Havana City had an uncomfortable 2-0 lead. It looked as if it was going to come down to a finish like the one the night before, when Havana City put together three singles in the bottom of the 10th to score a run and beat the Miners, 5-4.

The home team’s fans were restless throughout that one. Entering the last week of the National Select League’s season, Havana City had a half-game lead over Serranos .

Havana City’s fans didn’t expect the team to lose that lead in the two-game series against the Miners, the last-place Miners.

But when the Miners refused to concede the first game, the fans took it out on--who else?--the umpires.

After one controversial call, a man behind home plate held up a huge razor blade.

The fans around him chanted cuchilla, cuchilla, which is slang for being stabbed in the back.

Fortunately for the umpires, the razor blade was made of cardboard.

These are pennant feverish times for Havana’s baseball fans, which includes only those here who speak Spanish.

Alberto Juantorena, a 1976 Olympic track champion and now a vice president of Cuba’s National Institute for Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) said Cubans love baseball so much it inhibits the nation’s progress in other sports.

“We have to use me or (heavyweight boxer) Teofilo Stevenson as examples to convince children to participate in other sports,” said Juantorena, who himself played baseball before being ushered by coaches into basketball and then track.

“But they’d rather play baseball. It’s natural to see Cubans playing baseball all over the country.”

Cubans will play baseball anywhere, including the streets. Drivers constantly have to be on the alert for youngsters darting in front of them to chase baseballs.

Thomas Boswell, a Washington Post columnist, wrote a book, “Life Begins on Opening Day.” Unanswered is what happens on closing day.

Cubans have solved that by not having closing day. The tropical climate enables them to be boys of summer, winter, spring and fall.

But the most important seasons to Cubans are the three for baseball.

There are 18 provincial and city teams in the 48-game National League. From those teams, players are drafted for the eight teams in the 68-game National Select League. The best players from that league are selected for the national team, which represents Cuba during the summer in international tournaments.

Cuba’s national team has won 21 world championships since 1939, including six of the last nine and four straight. But even its No. 1 fan, President Fidel Castro, admits Cuba has an advantage in amateur baseball over most of the other countries, especially the United States.

“Many of the best baseball players (in the United States) jump to the pros, and our people do not,” Castro said in a recent interview.

Cuba won the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, twice beating a U.S. team that included future major leaguers such as Cory Snyder, B.J. Surhoff and Mark McGwire. The average age of that U.S. team was 20.3 years, while the average age of the Cubans was almost 28.

Major league scouts say the Cuban national team probably would be a dominant college or Class AA minor league team in the United States but no better.

“They have four or five players who could play in the big leagues,” said Dr. Robert Smith, president of the U.S. Baseball Federation. “They have awesome hitters, but pitching is not one of their strong points.”

Smith said that in a 10-game series against a major league team, he believes the Cubans would win three.

Castro doesn’t necessarily disagree, but he said he would like to see for himself. He has suggested a series against either the World Series champion or an All-Star team.

“Perhaps none of the big league teams wants to risk being defeated by one of our teams,” Castro said.

One of the first moves Castro made after gaining control of the government in 1959 was to order expansion of Stadio Latinoamericano from 21,000 to 51,000 seats.

Even though one of Cuba’s two commercial-free television networks carries two games each night, switching from one to the other depending on which is more interesting, the stadium is always filled for Havana City games.

All the seats are cheap seats because admission is free. (A slice of pizza at the concession stand costs 84 cents. Coffee and ice cream also are available.) No one leaves early to beat the traffic because there is so little traffic. Most fans take city buses to the stadium.

Castro’s involvement in baseball didn’t stop with stadium expansion. It’s no coincidence that when he decided he liked designated hitters, Cuban pitchers had the bats taken out of their hands.

Those bats, by the way, are aluminum, made in the USA. Because of the trade embargo between the two countries, Cuba can’t buy the bats from the United States but must get them through Canada. In exchange, Cuba sends ice hockey jerseys to Canada. What are they going to do with them in Havana?

When the trade embargo was first implemented, the Cubans began making their own baseballs. But their players, accustomed to baseballs from the United States, complained about having to use them. So administrators at the sports factory had their baseballs enclosed in Wilson covers. There were no more complaints.

The sports factory in Havana not only produces most of the baseball equipment used by Cubans today, it exports it.

The latest customer is the Soviet Union, which has adopted baseball as an official sport in anticipation of having a team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

Cuba depended heavily on Soviet and other Eastern Bloc coaches for its sports development in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Now it has returned the favor by sending a baseball adviser to Moscow.

“It’s not easy to teach them baseball because of the idioms,” said Felix Moya, an INDER vice president.

“We have taken the language of baseball and Cubanized it. For instance, we say equiplay instead of squeeze play. For the Soviets, we have to take our Cuban terms, translate them to English and then translate them to Russian.”

Don’t be surprised if the Soviets soon have a word for AstroTurf.

In a discussion here with organizers of this summer’s Pan American Games in Indianapolis, Castro asked for their opinions of AstroTurf.

Even though he was a pitcher in his younger, pre-revolutionary days, he said he, like most Cubans, wants to see a faster game with more offense.

So, if he was watching television on this particular evening as Havana struggled with the Miners, he probably was excited when the home team’s left fielder, Antonio Arduy, hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning to give the Blues a 5-0 lead.

Or are they the Browns? No one is sure about Havana City’s nickname. They have been known in the past by the color of their uniforms. Some fans call them the Lions.

The fans called the home run. Even before the hitter took the first pitch, they were on their feet, chanting words that mean “Go far.”

The fans are almost always on their feet in Stadio Latinoamericano , eliminating the need for a seventh-inning stretch.

In the bottom of the seventh, a man in the stands begins leading the crowd in cheers, hoisting his metal crutch into the air as he does so.

Three different salsa bands are playing. The bands have high standards, requiring that a fan bring his own instrument to the game before he can join.

Ciudad Havana catches fire.

A short time later, so does the woman’s kindling.

Entering the bottom of the eighth, Havana leads, 7-0. When the team scores three more times, the game is called because of the 10-run rule.

Havana is assured of having the lead for at least another 48 hours. No games are scheduled for the next day, a Friday.

But, somewhere, there will be baseball in Havana. There is always baseball in Havana.

‘We have to use me or (heavyweight boxer) Teofilo Stevenson as examples to convince children to participate in other sports. But they’d rather play baseball. It’s natural to see Cubans playing baseball all over the country.’

--ALBERTO JUANTORENA, Cuba’s 1976 Olympic track champion