Castro and Cuban baseball
02 December 2016Baseball was kept alive in Cuba because Fidel Castro was a lover of the game. There were no American Presidents about whom stories associated with baseball were written so much as linked to Fidel Castro in the past almost fifty odd years. American writers knew about Castro's background with the game and persistently kept on fabricating stories, always to show Castro's failure. Castro was supposedly reputed as a fast arm pitcher, who played for Havana University and was followed by scouts who almost gave him the chance to play in the big league in the USA, goes the story.
In a way all sports had a place in Cuban politics but it was done their way, while Fidel Castro oversaw the goings on in Cuba. We have always been questioning as to why Sri Lankan athletes' performances are not on par with others. It is true we have been able to achieve glory on and off at international level, but, something is keeping us away from doing it more often. The following will focus on a Cuba, a country worst off yet doing well on the international sports stages.
If you look at the athletes across the globe and care to observe, you will realize that the best ones are in Europe or USA. Some of the others from Africa, the Caribbean and some from Asia who have been able to make it to the international level have been training in either Europe or the USA. The only recent Olympic medalist from Sri Lanka also managed to blossom to that level because of US training. But the story of Cuba is different.
As briefed many times sports is a way of showing what a country is made of. Winning gold medals and having world champions a nation can boast of achievements made on the fields of sport. Unlike those in Asia the tendency of American and European nations is to show prowess in almost any sport they can take part in. Cuba although not a nation that can afford to feed all their nation's needs have been at the forefront with other prosperous nations and have been winning their share in all sports they face be it track and field, boxing, baseball, football, basketball, volleyball you name it they have been there.
If you take a country like Cuba and its standard in international sports activity, they have been doing better than most even when they have had plenty of obstacles placed before them, for quite some time. Their worst enemy until recently had been the USA who were behind all this. Castro their beloved leader himself a sportsman and lover of sport especially baseball, after the struggle and victory over their imperialistic ruler Batista, all athletes in the country were turned into amateurs. Castro was angry with what the imperialists who had been up to no good did, in search of the Yankee Dollar turning everything even the sportsman into running behind this dangerous carrot.
Turning all sportsmen into amateurs; it was even when it hurt a successful professional baseball circuit that was set up covering the entire Southern American hemisphere. And, Cuban players were some of the best in the game in all of the Americas. They could have made a lot of money, yet decided to go along with their beloved leaders thinking.
Later on towards the sixty's they yet had world class boxers like Stevenson and Savon who could have easily turned professional and been heavyweight champions of the world. They had been on many occasions tried to be enticed with the offer of dollars to become professionals but declined. At track and field also they had many stars and world champions winning medals in the Olympic Games. All of them never did it to wave dollars, rather the country's flag.
The major need to put athletes on the world map is their health. Cuba's foremost policy was the creation of a healthy nation. To accomplish that they gave priority to health education to create the much needed doctors capable of being the world's best. Cuba had the best health system in the world. As a result their athletes were well taken care of. A writer had this to complain about what went on in Cuba during the communist rule: "Cuba has never had real or enough economic resources to support the level of sport that this 'political irresponsibility' has promoted. First of all, it has involved too much of a social cost for an economy which has been badly damaged and is incompetent. However, the eagerness to show off our well-being in statistics, which promotes a successful image abroad has prevailed over financial common sense which dominates the global sporting scene." This excerpt from a recently published article in the Havana Times shows that Cuba was no exception to the rule when it came to sports holding top position in countries that turned it into a way of showing their well-being.
Yet the baseball culture they embraced in 1878 was kept alive although it was played by amateurs and Cuba became Amateur World Champions after they stepped down from being professionals after the revolution. Baseball never lost its appeal in Cuba, even though it came to be the top USA sport and was introduced to Cuba by them. Many are the Cuban players that were lured into big contracts and were smuggled out of Cuba to play Major League Baseball, they only had to get to US, the contracts were ready.
