by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SAN FRANCISCO–Cuba is the only country outside the United States that had a professional baseball team in the United States.The Havana Sugar Kings were a Cuban-based minor league baseball team that played in the Class AAA International League from 1954 to 1960 .

They were affiliated with Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds and their home stadium was El Gran Estadio del Cerro(sometimes called Gran Stadium) in Havana, Cuba. The Sugar Kings began life in 1946 as the Havana Cubans, founded by the Washington Senators scout Joe Cambria. They played in the old Class C (later Class B) Florida International League In 1954, Roberto “Bobby” Maduro bought the team, moved it to the International League, and renamed it the Sugar Kings.

Several talented Cuban players and other Latinos who eventually made it to the Major Leagues donned the Sugar Kings uniform, including Luis Arroyo Pompeyo Davalillo, Tony Gonzalez, Cookie Rojas, Elio Chacon, Daniel Morejon, Preston Gómez, Leo Cárdenas, and Mike Cuellar. The Sugar Kings — led by future major league manager Preston Gómez 1960 was the last year the Cuban team played in theInternational League. That year the teams finished: 1-Toronto Maple Leafs(Clev), 2-Richmond Virginians(New Yankees), 3-Rochester Red Wings(St.Louis), 4- Buffalo Bisons(Phila), 5-Havana Sugar Kings(Cinci), 6-Columbus Jets(Pitts),7-Miami Marlins(Balt), 8-Montreal Royals(LAD).

Preston Gómez who worked for the Los Angeles Angels towards the end of his life, told me that Cuba was the perfect place for expansion if Major League Baseball decided to have a club outside the continental United States; geographical location, easy travel for most teams, just a hop from Miami. Gómez was sent by the baseball commissioner to Cuba to arrange the 1998 exhibition series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban National team.

Preston also told me, that the United States will never have a team back in Cuba (at any level) unless Cuba had a totally different type of government.Just days after President Barack Obama made his announcement of the US intentions of re-establishing relations with Cuba President Raúl Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution,in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for “a new chapter” while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba.

In Cuba the 1% is the government. The leaders of the communist nation eat well, they can travel freely in and out of the island, they have all the privileges that they themselves negate the regular Cuban people. So it remains to be seen what really is going to happen between the US and Cuba. Words are just words, unless they translate to action.The fact is that in 1960 Cuba was one of the most advanced countries in Latin America.

A lot of people here in the US still do not understand, that under the current communist dictatorship of over half century in the island of Cuba, President Barack Obama is considered another capitalist pig by thecurrent Cuban government. That is the rhetoric that Cuba has been spilling, even after they lost their biggest friend, the old Soviet Union, who sponsored Cuba for billions of dollars each year, and after 1989 when that country’s system of communism went down the drain, Cuba was left alone with little support. Cuba had a lot to do in Venezuela, especially when Hugo Chávez was alive and became very cozy with Fidel Castro, who Chávez himself considered like a father to him, because of the same communist philosophy their shared.

The decline in world oil prices, today Venezuela is going through a very difficult economic crisis. There is a lot of misunderstanding about Cuba, since there has been non diplomatic relations with that country and no travel really allowed from the US to Cuba since the early 1960’s. Cuba always benefited for its geographic location, just 90 milesfrom US shores. However, the US never colonized Cuba,as a matter of historical fact, America actually liberated Cuba from Spanish colonialism, and though the U.S.influenced the island heavily for decades afterward, the U.S. President recently attempted the moral equivalence between “colonization” and communist tyranny, and that, at the least’is very disingenuous.

Cuba gained its independence from Spain in 1902. Havana had a lot of American influence until 1960, and yes the mafia had a foothold in the entertainment business in Havana, but the same was the case then in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and many other cities in the United States.Havana was Las Vegas, before there was Las Vegas, but most of the Cuban people had absolutely nothing to do with the mob. It is a chapter that Hollywood loves to recreate, but most of those big time movie moguls never visited Cuba and had no idea of the real Cuba before Fidel Castro and his gang.

In 2005 Cuban-American born actor Andy García, Produced and Directed “The Lost City”, a story of his family caught in the middle of a violent revolution,they had to leave and lost everything, but there are far and few movies of that sort. One of the reasons this movie was made is because García’s family lived it in his native Cuba, and obvioulsy he has the means and the name and the respect of Hollywood, to make the movie.

US citizen Alan Gross was arrested in Cuba in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for importing banned technology and trying to establish clandestine Internet service for Cuban Jews. After serving 5 years he was recently released and is now back in the United States.

As of today, at the very end of 2014, US. citizens arebarred from traveling to Cuba without government permission under a U.S. trade embargo imposed half a century ago that can only be lifted by Congress. The composition(balance of power) of the US Congress is changing next month, so this story still developing. Through out the years many people asked me why I have not visited Cuba. There is nothing for me to do there, I know what happened, I know the truth, my family left and I still have the deed of the illegaly confiscated property that was taken by the Castro government.

For me to visit Cuba today will bring me more bad than good memories. I know US citizens that go to Cuba, but I have yet met one that stayed in Cuba, some do not like corporations or capitalism, but they rather live here in the US, which is very interesting, because if they were honest to their core, they would stay in Cuba. If you do not want to see Walmarts and McDonalds, I would recommend moving to Cuba and be happy.

Will professional baseball be back in Cuba? Time will tell, the root of the problem in Cuba is not the Cuban people, but their government, they are the ones that have to change, The US has been a democracy for 239 years, Cuba has been a totalitarian communist dictatorship for some 55 years. You can be a communist in the US, we can see the signs in many demostrations on the street here, but you cannot be for democracy in Cuba, and if you are, and the Cuban government finds out, your next home is a prison.

Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy and prosperous 2015.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com