May 5, 1999
Ron Borges, MSNBC, May 4, 1999
On Monday night, U.S. was home of the not-so-brave
BALTIMORE, May 4 — It was a mistake for major league beisbol to go to Cuba. It was a bigger mistake to bring the Cuban National team to Camden Yards Monday night.
IF YOU BOUGHT into this whole idea of cultural exchange and the purity of athletics over politics that major league beisbol has been trying to sell you since this ill-conceived idea first surfaced, then you must have missed Cuban umpire Cesar Valdez body-slamming an anti-Cuban demonstrator to the ground after he ran onto the field in the top of the fifth inning, waving a small sign that read: "Freedom: Strike Out Castro."
Freedom did not strike out that murderous dictator Monday night. Not even there in Baltimore, a city that lies less than an hour up the highway from the capital of freedom, Washington D.C. Far from it. In fact, Freedom got stood on its ear, or at least dropped on it by Cesar Valdez.
Freedom stood by for the sake of beisbol expediency and let a Cuban umpire body-slam a freedom fighter to the ground and punch him in the face a few times before a handful of Baltimore cops ran out and broke up the brawl. After they did, they took the anti-Castro demonstrator away in handcuffs and let Cesar Valdez keep working. They got freedom backward Monday night in Baltimore.
The folly of this whole idea was evident in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, where the Cuban National team stayed — a lobby that was crawling all day with Baltimore cops and Cuban security officers and breathless major-league scouts and greedy agents trying to figure out some way to bring the scouts together with the players without anyone getting shot.
What all sides were waiting for was not the start of the game with the Orioles, a game the Cubans eventually won, 12-6. They were waiting for the track events to begin. They were all waiting for someone to make a run for it.
NBC News' Ann Curry reports on a Cuban umpire who struck and body-slammed an anti-Castro demonstrator who ran onto the field during the Orioles-Cuba baseball game.
No one did, in large part because to do so would have put at risk not only their beisbol careers but the lives and limbs of the track men trying to sprint to the nearest embassy or Catholic church in search of political asylum.
Because only one man made it, Cuba will call this a victory and a symbol of their countrymen's abiding love of their bearded dictator. How that one man — an assistant coach — heard the call of Freedom and answered it is a story for another day. It is enough to know he felt the need to run and was willing to take the risk. If you understand that, you understand that not even beisbol can escape the realities of harsh politics.
Despite becoming the first Cuban beisbol team to play in the United States since 1959, and the first to beat a major-league team, this was no victory for Fidel Castro. Nor was it a victory for Freedom. If anything, it was a victory for firepower, because that's the only thing that limited the number of defectors to one.
But the worst moment wasn't Valdez body-slamming freedom of speech, or the pacing, armed security guards roaming the halls of an American hotel, not to keep people from straying in but to keep guests from running out.
No, the worst moment came when a Miami television reporter asked Humberto Rodriguez Gonzalez, Cuba's minister of sport, why shortstop German Mesa was not in Baltimore with his team.
Mesa, you must understand, is considered the Honus Wagner of Cuba. He is its greatest shortstop, by all accounts. He is also a player accused two years ago of plotting to defect along with pitcher Orlando Hernandez. Both were banished from beisbol in Cuba, but El Duque managed to later escape and now makes millions pitching for the New York Yankees. German Mesa was not so lucky.
He remains in Cuba today, a non-person banned from his sport, which to him is like being banned from life itself.
When asked about Mesa's whereabouts, the sports minister snapped: "For us, discipline is a key fact of sports. Discipline doesn't have a name."
To that, the angry Miami reporter snapped back: "Freedom does."
It was here that freedom took its worst hit of the night — worst, since this all began on March 28 in Havana with a 3-2 win for the Orioles, because discipline ruled over freedom at that moment, the way dictators always want it to.
As the heat rose in the room, an Orioles public-relations official stepped in and cut off the debate. No speeches, free or otherwise, in Baltimore on this day. After all, who cares about freedom — or pawns like German Mesa — when there's beisbol to be played?
Not Fidel Castro, that's for sure.
And on Monday night, not the home of Freedom, either.
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