CECIL HURT: Like the U.S., Cuba has rich baseball history

HAVANA, Cuba

Each day in the Plaza d’ Armas, located in the oldest part of Havana, used booksellers offer all sorts of books to passers-by. Most touch on recent Cuban history and politics. But for an interested visitor from the United States, there are other volumes that lend insight into the Cuban national character.

Many deal with baseball. On Saturday afternoon, one vendor showed several such prizes, including a wonderful booklet, a chronicle of Babe Ruth’s visit with the New York Yankees in 1920. Ruth played three games in Havana and hit a mighty home run — a picture of the ball is prominently displayed in the pamphlet, printed in a bilingual English/Spanish edition.

The pamphlet also tells of Ruth’s other activities, which were centered largely around rum, cigars, horse racing and other worldly pleasures.

One could hardly accuse Ruth of being the typical Havana tourist of the time since, by all accounts, much of his behavior while at home also consisted of whiskey, cigars, horse racing and other pleasures. But as the world’s first transcendent sports hero, the Michael Jordan of his age, Ruth’s visit made an impression.

He hardly could have found more fertile ground. The love affair between Cuba and baseball had already been going for more than two decades by the time the Yankees came for a three-game series against a team of Havana All-Stars.

Scholars suggest the perfect baseball weather here in Havana was not the only reason Cuba embraced baseball at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, the Cubans were chafing under Spanish rule. The Spanish sought to transplant the national pastime of Spain — bullfighting — to Cuban society as well. Baseball, seen as a blatantly American creation, was subsequently banned.

Nothing makes an item more popular than the prohibition of that item — a maxim that has affected Cuba in many ways, some resonant to this very day. But the more fiercely the Spanish hated baseball, the more the Cubans loved it. The game remains a national fixation.

That is the environment the University of Alabama baseball team will find this week, when it comes on a long-anticipated trip to play its own three-game series in Havana. It’s not an unprecedented exchange.

At one time, most American proffessional teams were frequent winter visitors to Cuba. That hasn’t been the case for 50 years, but teams ranging from the Baltimore Orioles to the University of Tennessee came here in the 1990’s. Such exchanges have been extremely rare over the past 10 years.

When Alabama’s team arrives, it won’t be expected to perform Ruthian exploits (on or off the field). In advance of the event, it is impossible to guess (and unwise to speculate) on what impact, if any, the visit will have. It will expose the Alabama players and coaches to a different society. That is a valuable part of the college experience, regardless of the conclusion they draw about the visit.

The exchange is not quite at the national-team level. Although no final roster has been set, the Crimson Tide is expected to play the equivalent of a college team from the Institute of Sports in Havana.

However, a team of that nature would consist of the cream of the crop of players from a baseball-loving country of more than 10 million people — so it is likely to be very strong competition indeed.

It has been more than five years since Cuban officials first extended an invitation to UA. Now that the games — which begin on Tuesday, according to the current schedule — are close, it should be a fascinating experience in a baseball relationship that goes back more than 100 years.