Bring Back the Havana Sugar Kings
R., J.
Bring Back the Havana Sugar Kings A photograph in the October 14, 1959 edition of The Sporting News shows a beaming Fidel Castro shaking hands with a crew-cut gringo named Ted Wieand Wieand...
...It would be great for the game, and great for our relations in the hemisphere to boot The Soviets would be shut out cold As Don Miguel Cuevas, Cuba's native Joe DiMaggio, put it, "The Russians have yet to come up with a good left-handed hitter" Cubans are nuts about baseball...
...J.R...
...At the same time, we might even regain some of the good will in Cuba that politicians up to and including Reagan have squandered...
...Fidel attended all five games of the '59 series that were played in Havana, once calling off a cabinet meeting and dragging the ministers off to the park If only we could get Castro and Reagan, the former sportscaster, together, just think how they could reminisce about the golden days of Williams and Mantle, Snider and Mays...
...Immediately after the last strains of our national anthem had died away, the crowd roared, Afuera, afuera [Throw him out, throw Si out]: The culprit was promptly ejected " This, don't forget, was after Castro's revolution, when we still had an opportunity to establish some form of ties with the country...
...Even Brooklyn couldn't match Cuban lanaticos,' " wrote a sportswriter for the Toronto Daily Star after the Sugar King/Miller series A Havana journalist said of Cuevas: "In a baseball crowd, even Fidel would not receive the recognition of Don Miguel " Among the Cuban baseball nuts is Fidel Castro himself, who, as a pitcher for the University of Havana, was scouted by the old Washington Senators ("Good stuff," the reports said...
...But a black in the major leagues sounded remote, too, until Jackie Robinson came along...
...So there is ample precedent for bringing Havana into the upper reaches of the sport The benefits could be enormous At first Castro might insist upon a Cuban national team But the aim should be an entry that, like the White Sox or Athletics, consists of players from all over That way, folks in Fort Worth and Spokane could root for their hometown boys playing for the Havana team, the way basketball fans in Indiana root for the Boston Celtics and their star Larry Bird, who was born and raised in the state...
...There would be difficulties to be sure...
...Bring Back the Havana Sugar Kings A photograph in the October 14, 1959 edition of The Sporting News shows a beaming Fidel Castro shaking hands with a crew-cut gringo named Ted Wieand Wieand was about to pitch the seventh and final game of the Junior World Series for the TripleA Havana Sugar Kings against the Minneapolis Millers, whose second baseman was a fellow named Carl Yastrzemski Havana won that game, and the series...
...Pushing towards such an arrangement, however, would be several very strong forces...
...One is the resolutely amateur status of Cuba's players...
...We give to the people and they give us back things that cannot be measured," said Wilfredo Sanchez...
...First, from this end, a Cuban entry would be a gate attraction that baseball's money-minded executives—and their brethren at ABC Sports— would not fail to note...
...Against what manner of men are you leading us, since they do not compete for gold, but for honor alone...
...Castro became our devil, we became his, and the Sugar Kings became the Jersey City Jerseys But baseball resides in a zone that is beyond such matters as ideology and the Cold War Despite 20 years of CIA plots, Cuban adventurism, and harangues on both sides, those Cuban players and fans still want to play ball "We all await the day when we can play against the North American Great Leaguers," Wilfredo Sanchez, Cuba's leading lifetime hitter ( 332 lifetime average) told Thomas Boswell of The Washington Post We should give Wilfredo Sanchez and his countrymen their wish Specifically, we should admit Havana into the American League...
...The U.S...
...The paper went on to report an "incident" at the Cuban ballpark upon which every American president should reflect...
...They ride on buses, sleep in bunk beds in the visiting team's clubhouse, and—officially at least—all hold other jobs...
...If we can trade wheat with the Russians, there must be a way to play baseball with the Cubans...
...Similarly, American fans might feel just a tad more kindly toward Cuba if Cuban players were on their teams as well...
...ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsai, got a big hand at each of the games he attended," The Sporting News reported after the '59 series...
...Baseball helps the [sugar] harvest," he has said...
...As the Cuban national anthem was played," the paper reported, "the overflow crowd sang...
...Combining this attitude in the same league with today's million-dollar American players would be no mean feat...
...An aide to the Persian King Mardonious, upon hearing that the rival Greeks competed among one another for mere olive wreaths, said plaintively to his master, "Woe unto us, Mardonious...
...Besides, a few Lourdes Gourriels and Wilfredo Sanchez's, with their indifference to money, would not be a bad example for us...
...On the opposite shore, even Fidel would be hard pressed to deny his countrymen the opportunity to see in the flesh the immortals in the "Great Leagues," once the opportunity were advanced Fidel, too, in his own way, understands the economic importance of the sport...
...They also have deep convictions about what they do, A Sports Illustrated writer reported, "When the splendid young Las Villas rightfielder, Lourdes Gourriel, was asked if he would accept SI million to play major league baseball in the United States, he looked as indignant as if someone had proposed he seek employment in a tenderloin district massage parlor...
...Then it was 'The Star Spangled Banner,' and near the end a loud voice interrupted...
...and though it had been in the league only a few years, the team seemed to have a promising future It was not to be...
...It may sound remote...
...I do not,' he replied in a level tone, 'sell myself for money...
...Sorry, Chernenko...
...I don't think other clubs would stand for one team getting a foothold there," said Baltimore Orioles General Manager Hank Peters, when the leagues stopped George Steinbrenner from taking the Yankees for an exhibition series in Havana...
Vol. 16 • October 1984 • No. 9
