Cuban Baseball: It’s Big League in Its Own Way

Tired of baseball lockouts and strikes? Wish the game were played more for fun than for money?

Come to Cuba.

On the field, the play is very much big league: Fastballs that hum in at 90 plus mph and double plays turned as smoothly as the swings of the guys with the bats.

Watch Javier Mendez uncoil from his slight crouch and belt one over the sign advertising Fidel Castro’s next big speech. Like Cuba’s politics, Mendez swings from the left.

He looks like he would feel at home in almost any big league lineup. Off the field, though, U.S. and Cuban baseball are as different as the two countries’ politics.

There is no such thing as an “owner” in the George Steinbrenner sense. All enterprises in Cuba belong to the state, including baseball teams.

Nor are there “player demands” in Cuba. These fellows, some of them world class players, have to settle for their 100 pesos or so a month, no questions asked. Collective bargaining? Forget it.

Cuba-born Jose Canseco, who left the island as an infant, makes about as much playing for the Oakland A’s in a single inning (over $1,000) as the average Cuban player makes in a year and that’s no typo.

There’s no army of people needed here to handle finances. Admission is free and there are no advertising revenues. (Castro gets to put up his sign for free. He has other ballpark signs as well: “Socialism or Death” and “Ready to Conquer.”)

By U.S. standards, Cuban players endure extraordinary hardships. All travel is done by bus on this 800-mile wide island. Because of the U.S. embargo, American-made aluminum bats, the kind Cubans prefer, are in short supply. Some players are forced to use a bat size not to their liking.

Several teams, including Havana, live in barracks-like structures. Even during homestands, the players get to go home to their government-provided apartments only on the days always set aside for open dates, Mondays and Fridays.

If a player is a student during the off-season, his salary could be as low as 50 pesos a month. At the official exchange rate, that’s only about $45. Kirby Puckett spills that much before breakfast. Can you imagine Orel Hershiser toiling away for $45 a month?

If a player works as a 150-peso a-month laborer during the off season, he makes the same salary when he’s playing ball. If he averages three homers and 10 RBI’s a game, it makes no difference: 150 pesos a month, end discussion.

But with housing, food and transportation provided for, the players don’t complain, at least not openly.

“We’re not rich but we have our needs resolved,” says Juan Padilla, a whiz around second base for the Havana team.

Ahh, Cuban baseball. Memories of Minnie Minoso, Pedro Ramos, Sandy Amoros, Camilo Pasqual, Tony Perez. The Havana Sugar Kings of the International League. In the last 22 world amateur baseball championships, Cuba has won 19 times, finished second once and third twice, according to Baseball Commissioner Manuel Morales.

Knowledgeable baseball men figure 35 to 40 Cubans are of major league calibre. Cuban pitching appears to be mostly minor league level but it’s not hard to envision Cubans at other positions, particularly infielders, dazzling crowds at Candlestick or Fenway.

When asked about his lavishly paid counterparts in the U.S. “ligas grandes,” Mendez, 25, shrugs and says he sees no need for salaries in the million-plus range.

“There comes a time when that kind of money corrupts,” he says. Castro agrees, often lamenting that the U.S. is plagued by “irrational consumerism.” Some people, he says, think they have to have “65 shirts.” Wonder what he would say about major leaguers who buy Mercedes by the six-pack?

Mendez is standing in the barracks where he and his mates from the Havana team live.

The season is 23 games old and Mendez has been brutalizing opposing pitching, hitting a league-leading .392. He has six home runs and 19 RBI’s. Injuries hampered his performance in previous seasons but no longer. It’s about four hours before gametime, and most of the team is watching an afternoon soap opera on TV.

The trappings for the players evoke memories of boot camp: seven players to a room, no privacy.

Manager Servio Borges calls the place a “sporting motel.” It is located in the heart of a sports complex south of the city. Much of the area is devoted to training athletic instructors.

With a 17-6 record, Havana is leading the eight-team league in what is known as the “serie selectiva,” the prestige tournament of the several Cuba holds each year. Many players compete virtually all 12 months. The “selectiva” is the competition Cuban fans wait for. The winner of the 63-game season gets to play abroad and earns bug-eyed adulation from their fans. With fewer players, the calibre of play is higher than the 18-team national competition held between November and January.

Borges, 43, likes the idea of having his players live under one roof. Last year, they all lived at home and the team played poorly, so poorly that the local Communist Party chapter sat down with the team for a pep talk. (This happens to other teams as well.)

Borges says discipline is better this year and the record shows it. Still, he’s antsy. The pressures on him are no less than those faced by Tom Lasorda or Don Zimmer. There’s not much to do in Cuba, so people watch baseball and root hard. Morales, the baseball commissioner, says 72% of Cuban televisions are regularly tuned in to a game.

Castro, a one-time pitching prospect before making a career switch, likes the Santiago team from Cuba’s east end. He was raised nearby and, besides, that is the city where the revolution began.

Borges feels he and his team are constantly under the microscope. The “Girardillos,” as his team is called, finished in second place four years in a row and it’s been 15 years since Havana has won the “selectiva.” The fans are getting impatient.

On this particular evening, the team dines together on pork chops at the sports complex and then boards the bus for the half hour ride to Latin American Stadium. As usual, Borges is nervous. The bus takes off behind schedule and he won’t have time for the pregame meeting. Borges insists his players are nervous as well but the horseplay on the bus leaves a different impression.

Tonight’s opponent is Las Villas, a team from the central part of the country, and Havana is gunning for a three-game sweep. From the dressing room, the Havana team (known officially as Ciudad Habana) heads for the field, descending cement steps that have been chipped away by player spikes since 1946 when this relic, unsullied by artificial turf, was built.

The stadium seats 60,000 (some other playing fields in the league hold only 12,000) but there is a homey atmosphere, with many seats close to the action. It has a charm that some of the astroturfed U.S. ballfields lack.

There are relatively few private cars in Cuba so most fans walk to the park or take the bus. Shortly before gametime, with about 25,000 people in the stadium, about a third of the parking lot -- there are only about 150 spaces -- is filled. For the fans, the nice part is walking in and sitting down free of charge. The choicest seats are reserved for families of the players and VIP’s.

The atmosphere is relaxed. Here at least, the totalitarian police state ambience that American conservatives fret about is missing. Blacks predominate in the stands and on the playing field. Fans are expected to return foul balls hit into the stands. About 10 to 15 balls are used per game, well below the major league average.

A strapping right-hander, Lazaro Valle, only 19, has been picked to start for the home team. Borges says he’s one of the three best pitchers in the league. Control would be his biggest problem tonight.

For their part, the Girardillos are having few problems solving the Las Villas starter, Roberto Almarales, a slim righty. The home team, clad in blue and white, gets to him early.

In the bottom of the first, Mendez gets a big hand as he steps to the plate, the No. 3 hitter. The crowd leaps to its feet when Mendez drills one to deep right center. But a stiff wind robs him of a home run; the ball is caught just to the right of the 380-foot sign and to the left of the sign for Fidel’s speech. Still, Havana jumps out to a 2-0 in the first.

In the bottom of the second, the crowd gasps as the Havana catcher, Armando Ferreiro, is struck on the side of the head by an Almarales pitch. He lies motionless at home plate. Soon he is carried off on a stretcher.

The American ancestry of the game is very evident here despite efforts by the government to eradicate U.S. influence in other aspects of Cuban life. Instead of Spanish translations, the scoreboard shows “SS,” “RF,” “LF,” and “CF” to designate positions. The borrowing from the English doesn’t stop there: strike, inning, out, umpire, wild pitch and passed ball. A hit is a “jit.” You can guess what a “jonron” is. A “Texas?.” You guessed that one, too.

Borges had offered to let Ferreira sit out the game because his wife was in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy. But Ferreira wouldn’t hear of it.

“Money can’t buy that kind of dedication,” said Borges, implying that perhaps the U.S. should follow Cuba’s example and go amateur.

Meanwhile, after walking his second time up, Mendez rockets another shot into the wind toward right his next turn. Again a potential home run falls short but at least he gets a sacrifice fly (“fly de sacrificio” in the local lingo).

In the sixth inning, with the home team ahead 6-0, a local gadfly dubbed “Armando el tintorero” (Armando the laundryman) leaps onto the top of the Havana dugout with a pail and a broom and goes to work, celebrating the anticipated clean sweep of Las Villas.

In the bottom of the eighth, Havana’s lead swells to 11-3. Mendez, having been denied two homers by the wind, steps up with two on. He crushes yet another toward right. Even a gale couldn’t stop this one. It sails into the bleachers and Mendez can finally circle the bases.

That makes the score 14-3. Under league rules, if a team is ahead by 10 or more runs after seven innings, the game is over. So it’s a kayo for the home team tonight, or in everyday jargon, a “nocaut.” Guess where they got that word?