In Cuba, pair of Sox officially don't exist

WORLD SERIES
In Cuba, pair of Sox officially don't exist
Defying Castro, fans avidly root for their countrymen playing on the South Side

By Gary Marx, Tribune foreign correspondent. Tribune staff reporter Mark Gonzales in Chicago contributed to this story
Published October 22, 2005


LAS MARTINAS, Cuba -- Thirty minutes before Jose Contreras throws the first pitch Saturday in Game 1 of the World Series, his older brother Humberto plans to ride a horse to a friend's wooden shack, where he will listen to the game clandestinely on a short-wave radio.

There, with the radio resting on a bed, a cigar in his mouth and a bottle of rum nearby, Humberto Contreras will hear the call of each pitch and picture his brother on the mound challenging Houston Astros hitters at U.S. Cellular Field.

"I'm always nervous, but I'm sure he's going to do well," said Contreras, 41, speaking from this impoverished farming community on Cuba's western tip. "It's tough that his family, his brother, can't watch the game."

Although the eyes of Chicago will be on Contreras as he starts Game 1, many Cuban baseball fans will be forced to go to extreme lengths to keep up with the White Sox as they pursue their first World Series title since 1917.

Though citizens of small countries take pride whenever one of their own makes it big on the world stage, Contreras and fellow White Sox pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez officially don't exist in their homeland. Newspapers ignore their triumphs, their images are not shown on state television, and President Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders rarely mention their names except with scorn.

To Castro, Contreras and Hernandez were favored sons, nurtured by Cuba's powerful sports system. But they defected, and now earn big bucks playing baseball in the United States, Cuba's sworn enemy.

"In the case of Contreras, the thinking of Cuban authorities is: Why show and promote an athlete who was given privileged treatment and then abandoned the country illegally?" said Miguel Hernandez, a sports reporter for Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party.

Yet, in a nation where people are tired of politics but never tire of baseball, many Cuban fans said they have no problem rooting for two Cuban players who left the island to pursue fame and fortune in the major leagues. Support for the White Sox is surging.

"My team is the Yankees, but this year they batted poorly and I'm with the White Sox," said Carlos Fonseca, a 44-year-old bartender.

Back in Chicago, Hernandez, 34, confirmed the Sox's popularity on the island. "I talked to my family and asked them if people were rooting for the White Sox. They said, `Yes, if you're not for the Chicago White Sox, you're not Cuban.'"

But it hasn't been easy for Cubans to follow Chicago's run though the playoffs. On Monday, the day after Contreras' victory won the American League pennant, Granma's sports section led with a story about a local basketball club earning a bronze medal in a tournament in Russia. Not a word was written about the White Sox.

In the capital, Havana, and along Cuba's northern coast, some baseball fans say they can see the games by turning makeshift antennas north to pick up Florida TV channels.

Others, like 22-year-old Adrian Almeida, watch the playoff games on pirated satellite television, risking a $300 fine in a nation where the average salary hovers around $12 a month.

A few hotels and bars also carry the action for a price. At El Conejito, an upscale Havana restaurant, fans must pay a $1 cover charge and purchase at least two beers at $1 apiece to watch the game.

Nonetheless, the restaurant "was full of people" during Sunday's game, said Roberto Blanco, a doorman at El Conejto. "Cubans love baseball, but now it's even more so because of Contreras. It's pride. People identify with him."

But outside Havana, fans say they only learn the results of the games a day or two later. A lucky few have radios powerful enough to catch Radio Marti, the U.S.-government-funded station that is broadcasting playoff games. Cuban authorities try to jam it.

Humberto Contreras will listen to the games at his friend's home because his own radio is not good enough to pick up Radio Marti.

Pedro Gonzales, another Las Martinas resident and White Sox fan, said he had a fit after losing Radio Marti's broadcast in the seventh inning of Sunday night's game with the score tied. He managed to regain the signal minutes later after the White Sox had pulled ahead for good.

"They are inspired, and when this happens it's very difficult to defeat them," said Gonzales, a 67-year-old retiree.

A former schoolboy athlete himself, Castro has made excellence in sports a priority ever since his revolutionary forces rolled into Havana in 1959 after defeating Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista.
Since then, the nation has set up sports schools across the island to nurture talent. Cuban athletes have won Olympic glory in boxing and track, but no sport is more important than baseball, which has been played here since the second half of the 19th Century and is as much a part of the culture as rum, cigars and great music.

"No one talks about baseball in Cuba without passion," said Ian Padron, a Cuban filmmaker whose 2003 documentary "Out of this League" recounted the history of Industriales, the island's most popular baseball team, which once featured "El Duque."

Longtime Cuban fans recall the pre-revolutionary days when Don Zimmer, Tommy Lasorda, Brooks Robinson and other major-leaguers traveled south to play in the professional Cuba Winter League.

Top Cuban players have long excelled in the major leagues, including Adolfo Luque, who won 27 games for the Cincinnati Reds in 1923, and Orestes "Minnie" Minoso, a White Sox standout in the '50s and '60s who finished with a .298 lifetime batting average.

Before Castro, the World Series was televised in Cuba and local newspapers aggressively covered the major leagues, according to Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, a Yale professor and author of "The Pride of Havana," a history of Cuban baseball. "Cuban fans were crazy about the major leagues and the World Series since the 1920s," Gonzalez Echevarria said.

But the American-Cuban baseball connection ended shortly after Castro took power in 1959 and abolished professional sports. Today, Cuban players rarely earn more than $20 a month.

Cuba still produces first-class talent, even though fans complain the overall quality of the country's baseball has suffered as Cuban players square off against inferior competition in the Olympics and other amateur tournaments.

"Greece, Spain, China, Brazil, South Africa--these teams aren't very good," said Jose Manuel Ruiz, a 50-year-old cook and baseball fan. "[Cuban players] have lost their incentive. We know who is going to win."

In Chicago, Contreras said, "If you guys have seen what we've done in the Olympics and what they're capable of, I hope more [Cuban] players get a chance to play here."

Castro hopes otherwise, of course. Defections have hit Cuban baseball hard, and none was bigger than Contreras' decision in 2002 to remain in Mexico after an international tournament and eventually join the New York Yankees.

The youngest of nine children who grew up outside Las Martinas in a thatched-roof shack without electricity or running water, Contreras was discovered by a baseball scout when he was 18 and in a few years became a Cuban national team star.

His two-hit, eight-shutout-innings performance against the Baltimore Orioles in a 1999 exhibition game elevated his status to revolutionary icon. Castro watched the game from behind home plate.

"He was the best pitcher in Cuba when he defected," said Yadel Marti, a 25-year-old Industriales pitcher and former national team member.

Contreras' defection remains a festering wound among Cuba officialdom. Humberto Contreras, a former captain in Cuba's Interior Ministry, said he was forced out of his job last year after refusing to stop speaking to his brother by telephone.

"They told me I had to choose between my work and my brother," he said.

Some of Contreras' baseball contemporaries in Cuba also shy away from the subject of defection.

Asked if he wanted Contreras and the White Sox to win the World Series, Yasser Gomez, a former Contreras teammate on the national team, flashed a nervous smile.

"If [Castro] reads this, it will complicate my life," Gomez mumbled. "You understand."

But there is little equivocation about Contreras and the White Sox in Las Martinas, a tobacco-growing community with 6,800 residents that doesn't have a single stoplight or gasoline station but plenty of fans following the South Siders.

"We are very happy," said Roberto Bordado, a 47-year-old farmer. "They are going to win the championship because we have confidence in Jose Contreras."

And Contreras feels his homeland's support. "When I was with the Yankees, everyone in Cuba was a Yankees fan," he said. "And when I got traded to the White Sox, everyone became a White Sox fan."

----------

gmarx@tribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-0510220058oct22,1,7457310.story?ctrack=1&cset=true