Baseball

I knew we were getting close to the stadium when every single person on the street was headed the same direction. In Cuba, baseball is life. Outside the stadium there were people scalping tickets, selling hats, and tons of sweet treats up for grabs. To buy your ticket you wait in a “line” in front of a floor to ceiling rusted blue rod-iron fence. Luckily it was easy to make it to the front without much pushing. I reached my hand in behind the fence adding yet another peso to the already 20 or so being waved in front of the ticket ladies face. She went to grab my peso and exchange it for a ticket, but before doing so looked up and saw that I was clearly not Cuban, bringing the transaction to a halting stop. This is when I whipped out my University of Havana student ID. I paid $0.04 USD for the equivalent of an MLB game. Crazy.

In Cuba there are 16 teams who make up the national league, one from each province and two from the city of Havana. Like the Yankees (yay) and Red Sox (boo) saga in the US, in Cuba rivalries run deep. Los Industriales and Santiago de Cuba have been battling it out as favorites for the national title in a grudge that dates back to the early 1600’s when the capital was moved from Santiago to Havana. In an exciting first inning, Los Industriales took a 5 to 1 lead. They stayed up the whole game eventually winning 8 to 3.

Complete with cheering, chants, booing, horns, yelling, cowbells, posters, people fighting for homerun balls, food vendors roaming the isles, oddly proportioned dancing mascots, bouts of ‘the wave’, and people wearing Yankees hats, in many ways it was like a baseball game in the States. There were some differences… the seating was sets of unmarked benches on raised concrete slabs, the food was cheap (but more expensive than a ticket in), there were no jumbo trons, a sixth inning stretch, no announcers giving play by play updates, instead of balloons blown up condoms were floating throughout the crowd, and in the outfield there in the place of advertisements were signs that read “for peace and friendship” and “The Cuban sport for the road to victory.” Another huge difference is the players’ salaries. Many Cuban players are good enough to play in the MLB but choose to stay in Cuba and earn on average $20 USD a month. Even more so than baseball, patriotism is in the blood of every single Cuban.

The season runs until April, when the playoffs start. I’ll be going to more games for sure, but next time I’ll be wearing my new Industriales hat.