Cuba Béisbol

"It’s a symbol. I’d say like the flag, like the coat of arms, like the national anthem. Baseball has been a symbol of nationalism for more than 120 years." - Carlos Rodriquez Acosta, Commissioner of Cuban baseball

Béisbol and Cuba have been synonymous for more than a century. The sport grew rapidly after being introduced to Cuba in the 1860s by U.S. sailors and Cubans returning to their country after studying in the United States. In 1869, during the Cuban First War of Independence, Spaniards banned baseball in Cuba, where the natives preferred baseball to watching bullfighting. As a result, baseball became known as a symbol of freedom and defiance to the Cuban people.

Esteban Bellán

During the baseball ban, Esteban Bellán became the first Cuban and Latin American to play professional baseball in the United States, which he learned while a student at Fordham University. From 1869 to 1872, Béllan played a flashy third base for the Troy Haymakers, which later became the New York, and now, San Francisco Giants. The New York club joined the National Federation in 1871, the first professional baseball league and predecessor of today’s National League.

In 1878, the Professional Baseball League of Cuba began, only two years after the National League was organized as the first professional league in North America. By the 1890s, Cubans had spread baseball all over Latin America, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. In the early 1900s, Cuba imported a number of stars from the Negro Leagues to play on integrated teams in its professional league. The Cuban teams held their own in numerous exhibition matches against Major League teams throughout the first half of the century.

Before the revolution in Cuba in 1959, Cuban baseball had strong ties to professional baseball in the U.S. , with many major leaguers playing winter ball in the Cuban league. In 1946, the Havana Cubans joined the Florida International League as an affiliate of the A.L. Washington Senators. In 1954, the team was renamed the Cuban Sugar Kings and became an “AAA” minor league team of the Cincinnati Reds. The Sugar Kings won the Minor Leagues’ World Series in 1959, prompting speculation that it might soon become a major league franchise.

After the revolution, Fidel Castro disbanded the Cuban Winter League and replaced the professional league with a new amateur league in 1962. In the amateur Cuban League, sixteen teams play a 90 game schedule from November through April, culminating in a seven-game Cuban championship series with the winners of the North versus the South divisions.

In 1991, René Arocha, a pitcher on the Cuban National Team, shocked his country by defecting to the United States while playing an exhibition game in Tennessee. In the next decade, approximately 80 Cuban players defected to the U.S. In 1995, the Cuban government responded to the mass defections by instituting a “retirement program” that allowed its best athletes and coaches to “retire” from their Cuban teams and play in other countries, as long as they returned 80% of their salaries to the Cuban government. That year, 50 Cuban baseball players took this “retirement” and approximately 1,000 athletes and coaches left the country. Many Cubans believed the retirement program led to a decrease in quality of play and an incentive to play poorly so that players would be allowed to “retire” to higher pay outside of Cuba. In 1998, Cuba ended its retirement program, and the number of defections again escalated.

The Cuban National Team has long been a powerhouse in international competition. Between 1949 and 1960, Cuba won the annual Caribbean Series seven times, before Fidel Castro dissolved the Series in 1961 after converting baseball in Cuba to an amateur system. (The Series returned in 1970 without Cuba.) In the Pan American Games running every four years beginning in 1951, Cuba won the gold medal in 1951, 1963, and in every Pan-Am Games from 1971 through the most recent one in the Dominican Republic in 2003. Since baseball became an official Olympic sport in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Cuba has won gold medals in 1992, 1996, and 2004, with their only defeat a second-place finish to the United States in Sydney, Australia in 2000. In the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic, Cuba made it to the finals before losing 10-6 in the Championship Game to Japan.

Over 150 Cuban natives have played in the Major Leagues, including such stars as Jose Canseco, 1969 Cy Young Award Winner Mike Cuellar, Livian Hernandez, Minnie Minoso, 3-time batting champion Tony Oliva, Rafael Palmero, Camilo Pascual, Tony Perez, and Luis Tiant. Tony Perez, the third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine in the 1970s, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000. A 7-time All-Star, Perez finished his Major League career batting .279, with 379 HRs, and 1,652 RBIs.

In 1977, Cuban legend Martin Dihigo was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame after a career spanning thirty years in Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and the Negro Leagues. Possibly the greatest all-around ballplayer of all time, Dihigo played all nine positions. In the Mexican League in 1938, he posted an 18-2 record, while unbelievably winning crowns in both pitching (ERA 0.90) and batting (.BA .387). He finished with a 119-57 won-loss record and .317 BA in the Mexican League and 107-56 with a .298 BA in the Cuban League. He is a member of the Hall of Fames in the United States, Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.

In 2006, the National Baseball Hall of Fame also inducted Cuban and Negro Leagues star Jose Méndez. Although he starred as a pitcher and later a shortstop in the Cuban (76-28 W-L record) and Negro Leagues from 1907-27, El Diamante Negro gained notoriety early in his career, when in three appearances against the visiting Cincinnati Reds in 1908, he notched 25 scoreless innings, giving up only 8 hits and 3 walks while striking out 24.

For more information about Cuban baseball, see the excellent on-line PBS documentary,
Stealing Home: The Case Of Contemporary Cuban Baseball.

Available for Sale
The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria
Full Count: Inside Cuba Baseball, Milton H. Jamail

Players Born in Cuba