Cuba
From BR Bullpen
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Players who were born here / Players who died here
"Base ball has taken a strong hold on the Cuban public. There are over seventy-five clubs in that little island. The Sporting Life also has quite a large sale down there . . ." - The Sporting Life, August 22, 1891
Cuba is an island country loacted in the Caribbean. The nation's capital is Havana. Baseball has a long and rich history in Cuba. Negro league players often played in Cuba before 1950 on racially mixed teams, and many great MLB players have come from Cuba. Baseball is currently governed by the Federación Cubana de Béisbol (Cuban Baseball Federation), which sponsors the Cuban National League. In the pre-1959 Fidel Castro-led Revolution era, there was the professional Cuban League.
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[edit] Brief History
[edit] 1959 Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime by the 26th of July Movement and the establishment of a new Cuban government led by Fidel Castro in the 1950s. It began with the assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, and ended on January 1, 1959, when Batista was driven from the country and the cities Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba were seized by rebels, led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro's surrogates Raúl Castro and Huber Matos, respectively. The term "Cuban Revolution" is also used to refer to the social revolution after the overthrow of Batista and the adoption of Marxist principles by the new Cuban Government.
The Cuban Winter League and Havana Sugar Kings were the primary baseball victims of the revolution, as professional baseball was stopped. The Cuban Serie Nacional got its start as a result to continue top baseball competition on the island.
[edit] Mariel boatlift
The Mariel boatlift was a mass movement of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. It was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, leading to simmering internal tensions on the island and a bid by up to 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy. Subsequently the government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an impromptu exodus organised by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban President Fidel Castro was underway. The exodus was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in October 1980, by that time up to 125,000 had made the journey to Florida. Barbaro Garbey was the most notable baseball player to switch countries at this point.
[edit] Further Reading
- Peter C. Bjarkman: A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2007.
- Thomas Boswell: "How Baseball Helps the Harvest or What the Bay of Pigs Did to the Bigs", in How Life Imitates the World Series, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1982, pp. 81-96.
- Roberto González Echevarría: The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1999.
- Michael Lewis: "Commie Ball: A Journey to the End of the Revolution", Vanity Fair, July 2008.
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| Cuba Political divisions |
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| Provincias Provinces | Artemisa · Camagüey · Ciego de Ávila · Cienfuegos · Ciudad de La Habana · Granma · Guantánamo · Holguín · Las Tunas · Matanzas · Mayabeque · Pinar del Río · Sancti Spíritus · Santiago de Cuba · Villa Clara |
| Municipio Especial Special Municipality | Isla de la Juventud |
