The first time my friends and I tried to go to a baseball game here in Cuba, we rode the bus for 45 minutes, got off at the wrong stop, and walked to the stadium, which turned out to be deserted. “No hay,” a guard at the stadium told us, “no more.” Instead of happily watching a baseball game we were stranded in the outskirts of the city.
But tonight, as we approach the Estadio Latinoamericano to watch the first playoff game in the Cuban baseball league’s championship series, a distinct buzzing emanates from the stadium. We’re late. With three blocks left to walk, I hear the din of the crowd swell and recede-the first pitch is thrown.
We’re one German, one Mexican, three Cubans, and four Americans. Therefore, we owe the armed policemen manning the open warehouse doors that serve as the entry nine pesos. At 26 pesos to the dollar, it’s a bargain night out. We push our way to the front of a crush of belligerent Cubans annoyed at missing the first pitch, but the police promptly stop us. The Mexican has a backpack-the guard must check it. He finds our plastic bottle filled with rum and confiscates it. “Aqu? no hay.”
Imagine any American stadium. Replace anything built from plastic or metal with a cement counterpart, coat it with peeling blue and green paint, replace snack stands with vendors selling meat-product-and-cheese sandwiches, and liberally salt with rowdy fans whose knowledge of the game is meticulous-welcome to Cuban baseball.
The Havana Industrials and Sancti Spiritus Roosters are already on the field. I was told that I’d have a hard time finding a seat, but there is plenty of room. We sit on the cement benches and bitch about the loss of the rum. I’m silently glad that the stadium isn’t full. Though its technical capacity is 50,000 people, popular games have been known to squish in more than 60,000 screaming fans. Remembering my cramped bus ride, I stretch my legs and smile.
Innings fly by. In 10 minutes, the fourth has begun, and the Industrials are down by three. No one is very happy, except the Mexican and Cuban in our group from Sancti Spiritus. They don’t care to see what happens when the Industrials take the bat, so they head off on a quest for our lost rum. Fifteen minutes later, they’re back. The bottle, no rum, was found in a garbage can near the entrance.
Alcohol is nowhere to be found. The stadium sells no beer, the small shops outside don’t carry rum, and the nearby bars are closed. This is a first. Rum here costs less than both cola and water, and when a rum and coke comes to the table, the American proportions are reversed. Tonight, though, we have no such luck.
Apparently all of the rum has gone into the bodies of every swaggering Cuban male in the stadium, by means of flasks hidden in socks and boxers.
The Industrials have, over two innings, tied the game and emotions are running high. Men-and the few women in the stadium-rise to their feet to dispute the legality of the last out. The discussion escalates to taunting which, as they rip off shirts and offer them to one another to dry their tears, gets closer and closer to fighting. At first I had marveled at the quantity of armed policemen, but I now understand. They cart off confrontational ball fans left and right.
For the rest of us, it’s great fun. The fuzzy speaker system might not facilitate massive group singing, but the Cuban fans more than make up for it with taunts, cheers and small victory dances. It’s a breezy tropical Friday night, and energy is high. We might not have beer, but we have peso pizza, cookies, cola, a good game to watch and excellent company.
The game ends, Sancti Spiritus victorious, and we head to the exit. Habaneros skulk with lowered heads. Forty feet off, I see something ahead of me. People are crowd around something that turns out to be a fight. Where there’s a fight, police aren’t far behind. Fifty officers follow en masse. But they can’t make it through the crush of the crowd, so they whip out their batons and start swinging, clearing their way through. The throng turns around rapidly and suddenly the outskirts of the crowd is the worst place to be. My life flashes before my eyes as a wall of bodies rushes towards me. Death by stampede is not the way I plan to go down, so I sprint along the thin concrete benches as well.
But the fighters have the same idea. The delinquents and therefore the police follow me, batons whirling through the air. Throwing punches at the police, the girlfriends of the fighters are in hot pursuit. I see a plastic flask of rum hurled to the ground and understand why alcohol isn’t sold in the ball park.
At this point my heart pounds in my throat. I turn, gripping the hand of one of my Cuban companions, and we climb into the nosebleeds to find a calm spot. A few minutes pass and the men in the group snicker at me for my “paranoia” as opposed to their “nonchalance.” When the crowd has sufficiently diffused, we head to the exit. The only difference from ten minutes earlier is the occasional splash of red on grey concrete.
Julia Cooke is a junior in the College and an associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. Baseball can be fun without the rum, too, kids.
