On Sunday night, television viewers in Cuba saw what they haven’t seen in more than 50 years: a Major League Baseball game. And not only did citizens of the island nation see their first MLB contest since President John F. Kennedy imposed a trade embargo against Fidel Castro’s regime, they saw a Washington Nationals win.
From May.
As the Associated Press reports, the Nationals’ May 2 game, in which they beat the Atlanta Braves 3-1, was replayed fully on Baseball International, a relatively new program that shows highlights of baseball leagues from around the world but, until now, never from the sport’s top professional organization.
But Cuban viewers did not see a purely American broadcast. The commercials from the original broadcast wer stripped out, and the announcers were over-dubbed by Cuban commentators. (Although the original audio feed could be heard faintly, the AP reports.) Still, the whole thing struck baseball-loving Cuba as very odd:
“It’s interesting to see how they play, but I can’t say it thrilled me all that much because I don’t know any of the players,” said Diego Sierra, 67. “I would really like to see the Cubans, see how they are developing in that league, really see how well they are doing.”
He was talking about homegrown talent like outfielder Yasiel Puig, who has posted a gaudy .436 batting average this year in 26 games played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, or fireballer Aroldis Chapman, a closer who’s on pace for 40 saves with the Reds this year and who set a record in 2010 by throwing a ball 105 mph.
Defectors’ names all but disappear from the official media once they leave Cuba, the trade-off for contracts that make them instant millionaires. Islanders rely on word of mouth, news from relatives abroad and videos passed around on pen drives and DVDs to keep up with their exploits.
That Cuba’s baseball-playing defectors are effectively erased from public memory could suggest a reason why Baseball International presented a Nationals-Braves game; neither squad has any Cuban players.
Instead, the heroes of that game were Denard Span, who scored the Nationals’ first run and knocked in the other two, and pitcher Dan Haren, whose addition to the starting rotation has been mostly frustrating, but not the night of May 2, when he went eight innings and surrendered only a single run.
