by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

photo credit: news.yahoo.com–Clearing customs the players of the Tampa Bay Rays enter Havana in preparation to meet the Cuban National Team on Tuesday March 22nd’s historic pre season game

 The Tampa Bay Rays are playing the Cuban National team in Havana. First time a Major League team has visited Cuba to play exhibition since the Baltimore Orioles in 1998.

 One of the things that Cuba has in common with the United States is Baseball (Beisbol). Cubans have been playing the game since the Americans taught them in the 1800’s. In fact in 1871 Esteban Bellan, born in Havana, Cuba, became the first player from Latin America to play in a US organized league. It doesn’t matter what government is in power in Cuba, baseball has always been the national pastime. Cuba is the only Latin American country to date that had a professional baseball team played in an American Pro-League.

 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. No other in Latin America, but Cuba, ever had a professional team playing in an American professional baseball league.

 Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, about the size of Pennsylvania, with a populations of about 11 million people, and over two million living in the capital and largest city La Habana(Havana). But except for baseball, Cuba and the United States, separated by 90 miles and the Florida Straits, have little in common. The United States is a Representative Democracy, Cuba’s government is a one-party Communist State, in Cuba there is no free speech, or free press or free enterprise and everything is dictated by the one-party government. The US and Cuba broke relations on January 3, 1961, with Cuba’s Fidel Castro’s government seizing US and others property naming. The US has an economic blockade on the island, who used to be supported by the Soviet Union, but after their collapse in 1989 Cuba’s economy became basically unbearable. But when it comes to baseball, Cuba and the USA always were together except for the Cuban players who for decades escaped the island looking for opportunity and the dream of every baseball player around the world, to play in the major leagues.

 Just hours prior to President Obama visit to Cuba, according to the USA Today -Cuba arrests dozens of human rights protesters before Obama’s arrival.  Cuba even adopted the designated hitter years ago, just like the American League.

Tampa Bay Rays ownership is excited and proud that their team is visiting Cuba, and they cited the great connection for centuries, between Cuba and Tampa Bay, Florida. In the 1700’s Tampa history saw Cuban fishermen set up temporary camps on Tampa Bay along a small creek near today’s Hyde Park neighborhood south of downtown Tampa, Florida, not to mention the famous Havana-Tampa cigars. Two very excited Rays players were Chris Archer and Evan Longoria  sporting their white Rays game jerseys and dark blue jeans, were joined by Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg and manager Kevin Cash on the dais earlier in the morning. The navy blue backdrop behind them displayed the MLB logo, the flag of the United States and the Cuban flag as part of the “En La Habana” theme of the event.

 This trip is good for both countries, but what is not good, is that even though the United States is establishing flights to Cuba and the much needed dollars in Cuba are now flowing freely for the first time in more than half a century, what it would be better is for Cuba not to arrest people that do not agree with their system of government and eventually change their system from a dictatorship and a close society to a nation that would return to the group of free countries, were human rights are respected and it is the will of the people and not of the government.

 Is baseball big enough to attain this? Though to say, but probably not.  As a Cuban-born US citizen who left my country in 1961 because of the repression of the communist dictatorship, and because my father’s mid-size plumbing company in Havana was confiscated/stolen by the communist system,therefore changing my life forever, my father and my family in Cuba worked very hard and then one day all they had worked for, was gone, so we left the country. As a kid growing up in Havana, I never expected to leave the country, I remember in 1958 I left for Miami on vacation to visit my aunt Violeta who lived in the United States. Most of my best memories about Cuba are about baseball, and that’s it. The other stuff I saw I do not wish it happens to anybody. Yes, I remember watching Orestes(Minnie)Minoso, Camilo Pascual, Jim Bunning, Brooks Robinson and many other Cuban-born and US born baseball players during my teenage years in the Cuba before 1960. The Cuban government took part of my life away, but they would and could never steal my memories. Will I watch the game tomorrow? I do not know, I just don’t know.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Oakland A’s Spanish radio play by play voice and does News and Commentary each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com