Baseball Swung, and Cuba Missed

Ever stop to think what might have happened if Hitler had been able to sell any of his paintings or became the successful architect he hankered to be? What if Napoleon had been 6 feet tall? How about if Stalin really became a priest?

And what if Fidel Castro really had a curveball? Or a major league fastball?

History tells us the New York Giants thought Fidel had both. In fact, in the early 1950s, they offered him a bonus of $4,000 to try out for their club.

Now, in the 1950s, for those of you too young to remember, $4,000 was a lot of money. Sandy Koufax only got $14,000, to give you an idea. Castro could have become the Cuban Comet, Fireball Fidel, El Kid, Senor Strikeout. He could have made the cover of Sports Illustrated instead of Time. Cuba could have gotten lucky. He might have won a Cy Young instead of a Revolution. He might have struck out Stan the Man instead of Batista the Tyrant.

Jim McKay, the ABC sportscaster, has interviewed a lot of former pitchers in his day, but when it comes to dictators, about the best he could hope for would be the commissioner of baseball or, perhaps, George Steinbrenner.

But McKay, whose last foray into the real world of high-level international diplomacy was the Munich Massacre Olympics, became one of the few Western journalists of any kind and the first sports journalist to get a one-on-one interview with Cuba’s head man.

The subject of the interview was the upcoming Pan-American Games to be held in Cuba, but the agenda was wide-ranging. Castro, it would appear, is as eager as any other politico to get on prime time American television. An airdate is pending.

Castro, it turns out, is so desirous of a successful and propagandistic Pan-Am Games that, when the U.S. Treasury forbade ABC’s bidding on the games under the notion it constituted trading with the enemy, Castro let the network have the games free rather than let them go untelevised in the States.

The interview was something less than you might expect to see in Foreign Affairs Quarterly, McKay admits. It was a typically familiar, rambling, discursive, semi-oration for which the Cuban strong man is famous. It lasted, like most of his bombast, until well into the early hours of the morning and, while it is not likely to keep the lights burning late in the State Department, it gave some glimpses into Castro the sportsman.

First of all, Castro summarily dismissed any notion he might have regrets over not becoming the New York Giants’ staff stopper. “What would my life have been?” he shrugs. “I might be shining shoes in New York.”

Actually, Castro wanted McKay to know he had a better chance to be a basketball player. With a little luck, he might have become Air Castro. “I might have been better (in basketball) than in baseball. I think I had more possibilities than in baseball.”

In fact, Castro told his interviewer that, at 43, he played better basketball than when he was 18. As proof of this, he offered the fact that “I used to play with the Olympic athletes, to shoot, to see who could score the most points, and I was more or less at the same level of the Olympic athletes. And I was 43 and I had an excellent eye for the ball.

“The baskets I used to obtain were much better than when I was 18,” he assures McKay. “I asked myself why? And I believe it was maybe I was wiser, more clever.”

If he asked himself why, the answer might have come back that he wasn’t the dictator of Cuba on the floor at 18, but McKay doesn’t press the point.

If Castro could make a change in baseball, it would be metallurgical. He thinks the aluminum bat would improve the game. The increased velocity of the hit ball keeps everybody on his toes.

“It has forced the pitchers to improve their technique to counteract the advantages of the aluminum bat,” he says. “The more difficult the task for a man, the more developed his reflexes become.

“So, Americans, the aluminum bat in that respect has made players develop more because it is (such) an advantage for the batter and a disadvantage for the other players. I see players making plays they could not have conceived before at the time of the wooden bat.”

Castro doesn’t mention it but, of course, the aluminum bat is also much cheaper. It doesn’t break.

McKay does not ask the dictator what he plans to do now that Mother Russia appears to have abandoned her socialistic chicks, nor does he wonder why Cuba, which boycotted the last two Olympics, gets the Pan-Am Games. But he did ask Castro why he is staging such an expensive event.

“Well,” the dictator candidly says, “if we were to make the decision now, with respect to its expenditures around the Games, of course we would not have made the decision. But this is a decision that we made five years ago.

“When our serious, serious economic problems arose in 1990, we had advanced tremendously in building all the facilities. We had already signed all the contracts so when these difficulties arose, had we suspended the Games, economically, we would not have saved anything. And the facilities would have been left unfinished and we would not have fulfilled our international commitment.”

Cuba, its leader told McKay, is not without resources. It has, he boasted, “over 100,000 oxen.” And, presumably, millions of dedicated Fidelistas to drive them.

Although he did not regret his own lack of an athletic career, Castro did express regret another prospect never made it.

“You know,” McKay reminded him, “President Bush was a pretty good baseball player. Maybe there’s a possibility of your playing against each other?”

“Maybe,” Castro responded. “Bush is tall. Probably he was a good first baseman. But did someone ever attempt to contract him for professional baseball?”

“I don’t think so. No one ever offered him $4,000,” McKay noted.

“Well, I’m sorry about that. Because we would have preferred him as an important professional player, since as President, he has not shown to be very friendly toward us.”

If Bush could hit or Castro throw the curve, history might have been different. They might both be bubblegum cards today.