That’s Amaury News and Commentary

The government controlled system in Cuba has taken it’s toll on baseball in that, the largest island in the Caribbean. Cuba was the first Latin American country to have a player in the United States organized leagues.

Esteban Bellán was the first Cuban and the first Latin American to play major league baseball. Bellán, who after playing in the United States, became one of Cuba’s first great baseball player-managers, learned how to play the game while he was a student at Fordham University from 1863-1868.

During his time at Fordham, Bellán played for the newly created Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club. Founded in the late 1850’s, the Fordham Rose Hill’s played the first ever nine-man team college baseball game in the United States against St. Francis Xavier College on November 3, 1859.

In 1869 Bellán joined the Troy Haymakers for whom he played third base until 1872. In 1871 the Haymakers joined the National Association, which became the National League in 1876. The Haymakers later became the New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants.

Cuba has been a pioneer in baseball in Latin America, since the 1800’s. In Cuba even under bad government dictatorships, baseball always thrived, When the Castro-Communist revolution took over Cuba, and announced in 1961 that they were banning all professional sports in the island, baseball was among those, and now over a half century later, it is obvious that Cuba is suffering.

After the Cuban team was eliminated recently in the Caribbean World Series, in Margarita Island, Venezuela, (tournament was won by México, for the second year in a row), a lot of baseball experts have noticed that Cuban baseball is not at par with the other countries in the region.

A lot has to do with poor equipment, practice and regular baseball diamonds. In today’s regular Cuban league, when a foul ball goes into the stands, the fans have to throw the ball back. That by itself, should give you an idea of the situation. This is even during their national championship games.

Many players have defected and continue to do so, here in the Bay Area talented Athletics slugger Yoenis Céspedes was one of them. Maybe the most talented player, pound-for-pound on the A’s, he was lucky, he got to finally bring his family to the United States.

It is not easy for a Cuban player who defects, especially if he does it by himself, and leaves his family behind in Cuba, the government will make his family life “very uncomfortable”, in a country where their own citizens do not have the freedom to travel in and out of the island, unless they have special authorization from the government.

Musicians, athletes and public figures usually get that authorization. In the case of Cuban baseball players, they usually travel all-together as a team, with coaches and government representatives, that make sure they are all accounted for at the hotel where they stay, before and after a game, still many find a way to leave their teams when they are outside of Cuba and ask for political exile.

Others, just take the huge risk of escaping Cuba in homemade rafts and head north, searching for freedom. But it is not only athletes. Amnesty International, still list Cuba as one of the world biggest human rights violators.

On March 17, 2013,seven members of the Cuban National Ballet defected to the U.S. and Mexico while on tour with their dance company.

The dancers traveled to Mexico on March 17 during the beginning of the company’s international tour. It was there that they apparently decided to flee, and six out of the seven members went on to cross the U.S.-Mexico border near Texas, and since then they were granted for political asylum. Such is life in the island once called “The Pearl of the Antilles”.

Like Walter Cronkite used to say: “and that’s the way it is”.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk