The Old Ball Game, Cuban-Style
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 06.08.02 | 1:16 AM ET
During his visit to Cuba, Mike Meyer was encouraged by baseball fans to go to Santiago to see the great ballplayer Antonio Pacheco play. So he did. Meyer joined two local kids, Jesus and Carlos, at a game. His rendering of the outing, which appears in the Atlantic Monthly online, is poignant and eloquent. He found a stadium where outfield signs advertised only revolutionary slogans (“The Cuban Athlete, Example of Patriotism and Competitiveness”). He watched genteel batters who, after getting hit by a pitch, stopped to shake the offending pitcher’s hand en route to first base. And after the game he looked on as three Americans bought the great Pacheco’s jersey off his back for a mere $20. “The tourists emerged laughing from the clubhouse, proud of their loot,” Meyer writes. “Kids surrounded them and pleaded, ‘Dollars, dollars, give us dollars.’ Jesus said, ‘I recognize those men. Last night, they were out with the sixteen-year-old girl who lives
Next door to me.’”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
