It felt so good to be out in the sunshine, watching baseball. My previous sporting events here included the surreal super bowl and watching the Beanpot via twitter updates and Jared’s blog. I went to a few games last week, on against the atrocious Guatemala team and one against Santiago, which is like the Sox/Yankees match up of Cuban provincial baseball. I saw a few Sosa jerseys, and remarkably few Yankees hats.
I sat next to Reuben, which was useful because he could answer all my questions. I think he got a little annoyed at how often I wanted to know if something was the same as in los EEUU, but he obliged. I was told that they sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame and have a seventh inning stretch, but I never saw it. They play like the AL, although pitchers do bat at the amateur level. We even got to see the slaughter rule invoked during the first game, rung in with a home run by Los Industriales.
Yes, that’s right, Havana’s team is called Los Industriales, which is perhaps the best name ever for a socialist baseball team. The city has three professional stadiums–one for the Industriales, one for the national team, and the third no one particularly explained. I was told that the players, though not earning US-standard salaries, still do quite well. They’re also rewarded with material goods, like cares (which few Cubans own) and nice homes, their very own Industriales building.
There are no chairs in the stadium, just wide, cement steps that everyone sits on. Up the next level of the stadium the steps have wooden slats bolted above them like benches, which is where we sat. Upon second visit, there appear to be blue wrought iron patio chairs along the 1st and 3rd base line, but only about four rows of them. No word on how you get to sit there, since it’s separated by security and the rest of the seating is a free for all.
There’s a scoreboard, but they don’t always use it in order to save electricity. Even when they do, it’s often too sunny to read. Everyone just remembers the score and inning, and they all know the names of all the players. Occasionally the announcer declares something as audibly as a driver on the T, but not very often.
There is no alcohol because everyone is too poor (or too cheap? I couldn’t quite tell which one Reuben meant) to buy it. The stadium loses money when it buys alcohol because everyone just brings rum in water bottles and then buys TuKola.
The most popular noisemaker was some sort of bike pump jerry-rigged to two air horns. Delightful. The games take place in the afternoon to save money on lighting the field. They are shown on tv later that night. Only in Cuba could that work. I suppose wtih no twitter and little internet acces and few cell phones, its much easier. Doesn’t hurt that the news stations are simply instructed not to report on the games until after they happen, and they oblige. No one was in the outfield seats, trying to catch ho-merunz, at least until the Santiago game.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred when a Guantanamo player committed an error. Suddenly, and in rather perfect unison for a crowd of that size, everyone started doing the Cuban hand-snappy thing and chanting “Palestinos! Palestinos!” I looked to Reuben to verify that I was hearing what I thought I was. It’s by no means a functioning metaphor, but the basic idea is that los Orientales, people from the East, move to Habana and swarm it, often living undocumented in ramshackle huts. They are seen by many Habanaros as a loathsome trouble of useless country bumpkins. There roving, unwanted nature is thus likened to the Palestinians. Of course, I would argue that Palestinians are trying to get home, not to someone else’s city, and also that the Orientales are just trying to escape an area of their country with almost no economic prosperity, but those two facts have little bearing on baseball, apparently.
Despite the lack of beer and peanuts, and the bizarre ethnic parallels that are reminiscent of some European soccer squabbles (the “Jews,” anyone?) both games were great, and I plan to take in a few more soon. At 3 CUC for a foreigner and a peso for a student, it’s quite a steal to watch some of the best players in the world.
And yes, they do kick the ass of any American team that dares to enter Estadio Latinoamericano.
Away She Goes 