A youth baseball team from Humboldt County, in northern California, was invited to play ball in Cuba. The Lost Coast Pirates, a team of ten-to-twelve-year-old boys, caravaned through Cuba from July 22 through 29, 2000 playing games with three Cuban teams at their hometowns along the tour.
The invitation from the Cuban kids was extended to the Pirates via the international organization Pastors for Peace (www.ifconews.org/).Since 1992, Pastors has sponsored a Friendshipment Caravan which delivered a schoolbus, an ambulance, medical suplies and equipment, medicines, computers and school supplies, In 1998, the caravan contained two "batmobiles" -trucks packed with youth baseball equipment bound for Cuba.
The Lost Coast Pirates' collected good used baseball equipment and sent it to Cuba with that 1998 Caravan. The Pirates included their team photo and a letter describing the small communities in which they live, in the remote mountains of the "Lost Coast" of California. They signed off with the wish that, one day, they might share a game with their counterparts in Cuba.
The invitation to accompany Pastors for Peace to play baseball in Cuba was a joyous surprise to the team, and was met with enthusiastic and unanimous support by their parents. While the grown-ups worked out the logistics, the boys of the Lost Coast Pirates have only one thing to say:"Juguemos a beisbol con nuestros amigos Cubanos!" "Let's play baseball with our Cuban friends!"
Local Veterans for Peace Chapter 22 of Garberville, California, helped to sponsor the Lost Coast Pirates as our part of their mission to Cuba. The veterans and parent chaperones paid their own way and the team raised $24,750 to pay for airfare for the ball players and some former members of the team who are going along as interpreters.
The Baltimore Orioles played a Cuban national squad earlier this year in Havana before meeting for a return game in Baltimore. Those games were described by many as an attempt at ''baseball diplomacy,'' similar to the ``ping-pong diplomacy'' that helped thaw relations between China and the United States in the 1970s.
Despite still not having formal diplomatic ties, sports -- together with cultural and academic exchanges -- increasingly is providing a bridge between the two neighboring peoples. In fact, recent modifications to the 37-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba appear to have made it easier for Americans to obtain licenses for such exchanges, and there is a political will on both sides to promote such people-to-people contact.
Here is the link to a great story by Bob Doran in the North Coast Journal. http://www.northcoastjournal.com/060800/cover0608.html
A front page story on the Baseball Diplomacy tour in The Santa Rosa Press Democrat. http://216.167.95.20/local/news/14team.html
BASEBALL DIPLOMACY PART TWO
Plans are now underway for Part Two of the tour. Two teams of Cuban youth league baseball players will tour the USA on a 20 city tour. Chapter 22 will host a game in our area, and will supply a bus and driver for the West Coast portion of the tour. Would your group wish to host a game near you or support the effort?
Beisbol diplomacy with Cuba is not a new idea
The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/) has posted a collection of documents in their Latin America and US Policy section (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/) which chronicles the origins of "baseball diplomacy"--an effort initiated 25 years ago. The documents, ranging from unclassified letters to declassified secret cables and high-level State Department memoranda, reveal the efforts of then-commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, and his counterparts in Cuba, along with aides to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to arrange a game between U.S. and Cuban teams in 1975. Among the revelations are:
Baseball diplomacy would "help break the ice" between two nations separated by decades of hostility, as ping pong had done for U.S.-Chinese relations, according to memoranda written for Kissinger. U.S. officials believed that "picking a game we are likely to win would go well with Americans who are depressed by the regimented victories of the Communists in Olympic games."
Kissinger's top aide on Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers, argued that a baseball game between the two countries "would have a symbolic significance not limited to the sports pages," and "would also reawaken memories of your China moves."
U.S. government officials appealed to Henry Kissinger on Kuhn's behalf, arguing that such a "non-political" meeting of the U.S. and Cuban teams would perhaps "bridge the gap between the Bay of Pigs and a new relationship with Castro." But, despite their persistent efforts, Kissinger twice rejected Kuhn's proposal.
"These documents provide a historical background to the Orioles exhibition game in Cuba, and the follow-up game in Baltimore," noted National Security Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh. "Beisbol diplomacy is not a new idea," he said, "but after 25 years it is an idea whose time has finally come."
U.S.-Cuba 'Soccer Diplomacy' Set For Summer 2000
HAVANA (Reuters) - The Cuban and U.S. national soccer teams have agreed to play an exhibition match in Havana next summer in the latest round of ``sports diplomacy'' between the two nations, a top U.S. soccer official said Friday.
The match, which would be the first Cuban-U.S. national soccer contest held on the island since 1947, has been scheduled for July 19, 2000, and is due to be followed by a return match on U.S. soil, said Doug Logan, a director of U.S.-based Major League Soccer.
``There are going to be virtually no hurdles,'' Logan told Reuters, adding that the U.S. Soccer Federation's proposal for the game had been accepted by Cuban sports authorities and given a positive reception by the U.S. government.
Acting on behalf of the U.S. federation, Logan brought the invitation to Cuba this week while accompanying a Nebraska boys' team on a week-long soccer tour to the communist-ruled Caribbean nation.
The game would be the highest-level sporting exchange inside Cuba since major league baseball's Baltimore Orioles played a Cuban national squad earlier this year in Havana before meeting for a return game in Baltimore.
Those games were described by many as an attempt at ''baseball diplomacy,'' similar to the ``ping-pong diplomacy'' that helped thaw relations between China and the United States in the 1970s.
The baseball series aroused political and sporting passions. There were some demonstrations against Cuban President Fidel Castro at and around the Baltimore game. A pro-government crowd chanted ``Fidel! Fidel!'' when the Cuban leader took to the field before the Havana match.
``Baseball as a vehicle for people-to-people contact is just too big, too powerful and too volatile,'' Logan said in an interview in Havana.
He contrasted the enormous popularity and political weight of baseball in both countries with the relatively low-key presence of soccer, particularly in Cuba.
Logan said U.S. cable television network ESPN signed up to televise live the July 19, 2000, game in Havana.
While the Cuban government has not officially announced the scheduling of the match, the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma referred to the U.S. invitation in a report Thursday.
Logan said Cuban Soccer Federation chief Luis Hernandez and Cuba's main state sports authorities, CubaDeportes and INDER, had given their approval.
The match between the national squads would be a culmination of various lower-level soccer exchanges between Cuba and the United States in recent years, such as two visits by a California women's team and the current Nebraska boys' tour.
Despite still not having formal diplomatic ties, sports -- together with cultural and academic exchanges -- increasingly is providing a bridge between the two neighboring peoples.
Recent modifications to the 37-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba appear to have made it easier for Americans to obtain licenses for such exchanges, and there is a political will on both sides to promote such people-to-people contact. The United States, however, has not dropped its official hard line against Castro and Cuba.
The U.S. soccer team, which has World Cup experience, would be the favorite in the matches against Cuba, although the island's squad has improved in recent years with some notable victories over Caribbean neighbors. ``Our team is being reformed, it's a new, young team. So, really, they are both teams that are up and coming, getting better and better,'' Logan said, adding the games would be a useful rehearsal for the 2002 World Cup qualifiers.
Logan, who served as U.S. Major League Soccer commissioner until just weeks ago, has a personal interest in the game, too. He was brought up in Cuba and was back on the island this week for the first time in 40 years. Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.