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The smell of fresh-cut grass in the outfield. A pitcher taking his place on the mound. The crack of bat against ball. The experience is as American as it gets - or is it?
With only 90 miles between the two countries, politically speaking, Cuba and America are worlds apart. Yet baseball - the favored national pastime of both - is as American as apple pie and as Cuban as café Cubano. Although the rules are the same, cultural and economic differences abound.
One remarkable distinction between American and Cuban baseball players is the salaries they receive. The Orioles, for example, have a projected payroll in excess of $80 million. In Cuba, players earn an average of $10 a month. For some of these players, it is their only source of income. Cuban National Team players receive "sports leave" pay at the same rate they get from their off-season jobs. Many Cuban baseball stars make less than $2,000 annually, or one half of one percent of the average New York Yankee's salary.
Cubans usually pay two pesos (about 10 cents) for box seats and one peso for the upper decks at baseball games, in a country where the average monthly salary in 1998 was 217 pesos ($10.85).
While American children have the luxury of playing in little leagues and on high school teams, Cubans have two choices: either be selected, at age seven, to attend government academies designed for cultivating Olympic talent, or settle for playing stickball on the street without any real equipment. Regardless, the passion that Cuban kids have for the sport in evident throughout Cuba. Dirt lots are filled with groups of children with their sticks and balls, playing games that last for hours.
Drugs do not appear to be a problem in Cuban sports, although gambling has caused some controversy. In the late 1970s, Cuban authorities permanently banned several players for accepting bribes to fix games in internal Cuban play. In 1982, it was reported that seventeen additional top players and coaches had been banned from the game and their names expunged from the records.