Baseball

      It's playoff time in Major League Baseball again.  The leaves have 
turned umber, the days are shorter and somewhere in Cuba, little boys are wishing they could just sit in their homes and turn on the telly.  San Francisco is about to shut out the Cardinals in the seventh game of the National League playoffs.  We take television for granted here.  We take everything for granted here. We have electricity and hot water and televisions in every room. We may or may not even care that it's almost the World Series. 
     Not in Cuba.  In Cuba, baseball is the way out. Of the food lines and crowded apartments and sub-par medical treatments. In Cuba, boys of all
ages play baseball in the streets, in the alley's and in the fields. They play 
barefoot with sticks and rocks. They use their shoes for the bases. You see
them playing as you drive through their crumbling country. They cheer and
applaud and smile.  It's the only relief they have from all the grey that surrounds them. 
     Since 1913 when Merito Acosta somehow managed to escape the insanity
in Cuba and become the first Cuban to play for a major league team, there 
have been 172 (baseball almanac) players to leave Cuba for riches and fame
in America.  Jose Canseco and Alex Ramirez are two playing here now. Ramirez was born in Pinar de Rio, hours outside Havana where mountains rise up
and the weather is perfect for growing tobacco. The farmers all lost the
ownership of their family farms when Castro came into play. They get up at
dawn and work the fields using oxen, only to be forced to give 80% of their
income and yield to the government. The sun browns their skin and they
raise chickens and turkeys to feed their families of 10 or more. Three 
generations live in one house. Sometimes four. Electricity comes and goes. A breeze from the mountains cools their concrete block homes. They have no screens on their windows. 
     They are proud. They are kind. They serve dark, rich coffee to all who visit. Without the milk. Without the sugar.  They must walk miles into town to wait hours to collect their food rations which won't stretch the month. They must keep track of what they receive for free. Sugar and flour and salt.  But it's never enough. Everything else they must buy. If they are lucky, they live on $25.00 a month. 
     One sees very few vegetable gardens growing in their yards. They have 
no yards and until recently, they didn't know how to grow anything other than sugar and tobacco. 
     It's raining now in San Francisco. The Giants are one out away from
the World Series. People in the stands haven't left their seats. They are
waiting for that moment when they will feel complete exaltation. 
Something rare in Cuba. Something only those baseball players who get out
can feel.