Cuba's All-Stars

"Baseball is part of ourselves, it's in our hearts. We have an emotional link to it."

The score is 5 to 1 in the bottom of the seventh inning at Cuba's annual all-star game as the island's best baseball players show off for a Sunday afternoon crowd of fifteen thousand. Today's game, between the Orientales and the Occidentales, takes place in Ciego de Avila, a city of eighty thousand in Cuba's midsection that has been rewarded with this honor for having so greatly improved game attendance during the past year. Jose Ramon Cepero Stadium has been full since ten in the morning for the two o'clock game, and latecomers perch on the outfield wall. Attendance costs one peso (five cents); parking your bike in a lot adjoining the stadium costs the same.

An energetic man in his late fifties, with "Cuba" emblazoned on his red jersey, makes his way down through the stands and hops onto the home team's dugout roof. He has horn-rim glasses, smokes a Cohiba, and wears a silver whistle around his neck. This is Armando, from Havana, a man known universally as El Tintorero (the laundryman) for his day job: heading a crew that irons sheets for tourist hotels. Television cameras invariably focus on him at the Havana games--which he never misses--as he waves his cigar, shouts, toots his whistle, doffs his hat, jumps up and down, and rouses the crowd for the home team. El Tintorero has become such a part of Cuban baseball that the baseball commission pays his way to important out-of-town events, such as this all-star game.

"The only time I don't cheer is when Havana teams play each other," Armando tells me between whistle blasts. "And when I can't yell, I feel bad. At a regular game, people go crazy and everyone screams. They're happier when they participate--even the Palestinos" (Havana slang for people from the eastern part of the island who have taken up residence in the capital in recent years). Yet even this cheerleader acknowledges the turbulence that has tested his passion of late: "Many good players have either left for the States or only play overseas." In the latter case, some players "retired" to play in Latin America, Italy, or Japan, and the Cuban government collected 80 percent of their foreign pay. Cuba's baseball commission ended the practice last year but still allows coaches to work overseas under the same terms.

For the past few seasons, Cuban baseball has been battered by previously unheard-of losses in international competition, by players abandoning the country, by fans abandoning the stadiums, and by accusations of financial mismanagement. But heads have rolled at the government sports ministry, and a new crew has been brought in to straighten things out, bring back the luster to Cuban baseball, and get fans back into the stands. Cuba's once-invincible international primacy is now returning.

At the end of each winter baseball season, Cuba's best players are selected for the national team that plays in tournaments throughout the Caribbean and the Americas as well as in Asia and Europe. Cuba's reputation rests, above all, on its dominance of the Pan American games and, of course, the Olympics. The national team is also scheduled to come to the United States to play the amateur standouts--essentially the college all-stars--but politics often dictates whether or not they will show up (they didn't last year).

Virtually all international competition is governed by the International Baseball Association (IBA), an organization that grew out of efforts in the 1930s--culminating only in 1992--to make baseball an official Olympic sport. Now headquartered in Switzerland, the IBA recognizes about one hundred national baseball federations. These send delegates to the IBA congress, which votes on measures related to world baseball. In 1996, in a significant move, the congress voted to allow professionals to represent their countries.

For Cuban baseball, the nationally televised east-west all-star game is a climactic event, and the pregame festivities draw on the talent, youth, and emotions that the game thrives on. To show off for the fans, the all-stars compete in batting, running, and throwing contests. Orestes Kindelan, whose home team is Santiago de Cuba, slugs four balls out of the park in rapid succession; hometown favorite Roger Poll sprints from home to first in 3.58 seconds; Oscar Machado of Villa Clara circles the diamond in 13.95 seconds. Catcher Eriel Sanchez of Sancti Spiritus is best at tossing out an imaginary base-stealer, and from the outfield, speedster Poll throws within eighteen inches of homeplate. There's also a three-inning youth championship game played by nine- and ten-year-olds (look for first basekid Joey L. Perez Ramos to lead Cuba's national team in ten years). After they've played, the youngsters stand next to adult players along the base paths. Each all-star bends down and picks up a young athlete, hugs him, and affectionately carries him on his shoulders off the field. The kids get to watch the game from the dugouts as the Orientales beat the Occidentales 5 to 2.