A few of the players cautiously share with us some of the realities of life under Castro. One player comments, “Fidel proporciona todo excepto el desayuno, el almuerzo y la cena” (“Fidel provides everything except breakfast, lunch and dinner”). We learn that the average salary in Cuba is about $20 per month and that taxi drivers often earn more than doctors and lawyers because they receive tourist tips. And we learn that despite the glaring disparity in our abilities and achievements and circumstances, we all share a love for the game and a hope for a brighter future.
Other experiences are equally memorable. After a morning game in Viñales, we load our bus with duffel bags of donated Little League baseball gear from our respective hometowns and drive farther into the countryside. After an hour, we stumble upon a remote, picturesque village called Pons. It’s set amidst expansive tobacco fields and steep-sided limestone hills called mogotes. In the heart of the village, we find a stunningly beautiful baseball field with a richly colored red dirt infield and a perfectly imperfect white picket fence. Despite the obvious poverty in the area, the locals have clearly sacrificed to create and maintain the field.
Minutes after we exit the bus, several children come over to meet us. The crowd grows rapidly when the donated baseball gear comes out. An informal game follows as the children are eager to test out their new equipment. We laugh at what these Cuban kids would do to our children’s Little League teams. Even the 9-year-olds have long, elegant batting strokes, and they swing hard at everything. We drive away at sunset wondering if some future baseball superstar will someday emerge from this remote Field of Dreams.
One afternoon in Havana, we break up into small groups and wander through back streets. The music, the architecture, the dance and, of course, the Cuban people all contribute to a magical mosaic: pulsing salsa in alleyways; passionate sports debates on sidewalks; kids playing stickball in the streets; and the smell of freshly cooked rice, beans and plantains coming from the home restaurants known as paladares. The crumbling façades and 1950s-model Buicks and Chevys create an authentic charm. But this is a poor and, in many ways, dysfunctional place. The half-finished infrastructure projects, abruptly halted following the Soviet Union’s collapse, provide stark symbols of Cuba’s continuing struggles.
On our way to the airport on the final day, we are exhausted and banged up and humbled by our collective good fortune to have remained fit enough to undertake this trip. Our guide, Elias, who had enjoyed watching us compete against some of his favorite Cuban baseball idols, informed us that Cuban national radio had just reported that a “master class team of baseball players from a university in America” had played a series of competitive games against former Serie Nacional deBéisbol players.
Elias was quick to point out that the broadcast had graciously not provided the final record of our tour. Then he paused for a moment, smiled broadly and proclaimed, “You see, my friends, no particular team won this week. It was baseball that won.”
Rob Born ’90 is vice president of corporate development at Vocera Communications, a health care IT provider. He lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. John Hereford ’87 is founder of Oak Leaf Energy Partners, a Denver-based renewable energy development firm. Combined, they played baseball at Amherst from 1984 to 1990, and in 2016.