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Baseball duel: USA against Cuba: Cuba is subject to the USA with MLB professionals at the Baseball World Cup

Yoan Moncada (right) was late against US catcher Will Smith in Miami but hopes to play more often for Cuba in the future.

Photo: imago/Sam Navarro

The big party fell through – and twice over. After Cuba’s national baseball team had surprisingly caused a sensation at the World Baseball Classic (WBC), the unofficial world championship, public viewings were planned throughout Cuba for the semifinals on Sunday evening against archrival USA. In Havana and the entire western part of the island, however, it poured non-stop from the late afternoon. And in the game itself, the US team, which was packed with all-stars, gave the Cubans a clear 14:2 beating.

It wasn’t until the fifth edition of the tournament, which had been held since 2006, that the two baseball-crazy countries met – and of all places in Miami, with its large Cuban community abroad. As expected, there were protests against the Cuban government before and around the game, albeit from a relatively small group.

In Cuba, on the other hand, it felt like the whole country gathered behind the team and cheered on the television sets. It’s been a long time since a baseball game has so electrified the country. “These days people no longer talk about queues, no longer about (poor) local transport, no longer about power cuts, but about baseball,” wrote the state online portal Cubadebat and spoke of “balm for the soul”.

In fact, not only the economic crisis seems to be forgotten for a moment, but also the sporting one. After years of failure, the team’s resurgence has rekindled the passion of millions of fans. The start of the domestic league was pushed back a week, President Miguel Díaz-Canel regularly tweeted his support and musicians from the island composed a song especially for the national team.

The real meaning, however, is sports-political: For the first time ever, Cuba’s baseball association has changed its practice and appointed active professionals from the North American professional league Major League Baseball (MLB) to the squad of an international tournament, including the two Chicago White Sox players, Luis Robert Jr. and Yoan Moncada, as well as some minor league players and Cuban professionals playing overseas with government permission. Only eight of the 30 nominees are active in the domestic league.

For decades it was almost impossible to appoint players who were active in the USA because of the US blockade policy. To be employed by a local club, Cubans must take up residency in a third country and cut all ties to Cuba. In 2019, Donald Trump scuttled a deal between the Cuban association and the MLB that would have allowed players to play legally in the United States. After some back and forth, the new US government gave Cuba’s association special permission to call up players from their own professional leagues for the WBC.

The now long list of possible internationals quickly got smaller. Cuba’s federation declared from the start that no one who “deserted” during an international competition would be called up. Also, according to association president Juan Reynaldo Pérez, only players should be selected who “have maintained a positive attitude towards our baseball and our country”. In other words, players who are not publicly critical of the Cuban government. Yoan Moncada, for example, received permission to leave the country in 2014; Luis Robert left the island illegally in 2016, but not during a tournament. Both saved themselves political comments.

Others, however, declined to play for Cuba themselves, including seven-time Allstar and 2016 MLB champion Aroldis Chapman and Aledmys Díaz, who said he would only play for Cuba “when everyone is allowed to.” In his opinion, that will only happen when baseball is no longer politicized.

Optimists see the fact that Cuba’s association for the first time formed a joint team of professionals active in the USA and Cuba as a sign of a possible change in the country’s relations with those former compatriots who left the island. Even the party newspaper »Granma« called before the semi-finals to wear the jersey on behalf of those »who live on the island and in Miami«. The Cuban team “and the way it has represented all Cubans around the world is a call to reconsider this relationship.” Sounds you haven’t always heard.

Yoan Moncada spoke of a dream to play for Cuba and one of “the best experiences of my life”. He was “very hopeful that this is a first step for the Cuban MLB players to represent their country in the future”. Then the defeat against the USA would not be the end but the starting point for a rapprochement between the island and its diaspora that might go beyond sport.

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