Before Obama and the Stones visited Havana, the Cuban national baseball team played in two tournaments in Prince George. World Baseball Challenge organizer and former Citizen sports editor Jim Swanson looks back on the historic visits and how the bond of baseball can bring countries together.
Cuba is back.
President Barack Obama paid a visit. The Rolling Stones played a free concert in Havana over the Easter weekend. Before that, the Tampa Bay Rays squared off against the Cuban National Team, also in Havana.
For Prince George residents and for area baseball fans, Cuba was back way before this month.
Cuba sent two nationals teams to the World Baseball Challenge in Prince George in 2011 and 2013. Some of those players are now with major league teams, a point of pride for
Jim Swanson, one of the chief organizers of the World Baseball Challenge. He now manages the Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League. Securing the Cuban participation in World Baseball Challenge required negotiation trips to the American-embargoed island nation. It required careful assurances about how the team would be treated on Canadian soil.
All sides were outspoken in their satisfaction with how it all unfolded and those two tournaments became a highlight in the history of Canadian baseball and Canadian sports politics. Swanson took a look back at how Prince George and Havana shook hands at home plate long before Barack Obama and Raul Castro ever did:
Cuba is a place where baseball is beisbol, and a baseball is called a pelota.
The connection between Prince George and Cuba, the Spanish-speaking island that has for so long been on outcast terms with its geographic neighbours, is one that will go down as pre-dating the fanfare that was dubbed 'Baseball Diplomacy' (or, Diplomacia de Beisbol) with Barrack Obama and Raul Castro sitting side by side, front row.
Last Tuesday, the two leaders were bringing calm to a half-century of a nasty relationship dating back to the Bay of Pigs by sitting front row at Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana, watching the Tampa Bay Rays play the Cuban national team.
They did so at a baseball game. Not a pub, not a golf course, not a fancy meeting room, but rather a place where fans chased after any foul pelota as a priceless souvenir.
Not that it really mattered but Tampa Bay won the game. And maybe that was because their leadoff hitter was a Cuban player who defected in 2013, outfielder Dayron Varona.
If you want to understand the passion Cubans have for baseball, imagine how we proud Canadians were glued to every move of Canada's men's hockey team in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, culminating with Sidney Crosby's golden goal.
Now take that day, and times it by at least 10. You might be close to understanding how important beisbol is to Cubans, who haven't had much else to grip their lives. A long-since-outdated embargo has played a big role in that.
Do you remember the Cuban national team, that time they got off a plane at YXS? If you've been in Prince George over the last six years, you should remember them fondly. The Cubans sent their best players, their top team, to play at Citizen Field in the 2011 World Baseball Challenge.
Two years later, their pro league champions, the Ciego d'Avila Tigres, came to Prince George. One young player, Yozzen Cuesta, defected late in the event, making international news.
Well, in last Tuesday's game between the MLB Rays and Cuban national team, three players who played in Prince George held spots on the Cuban team. Jose Garcia, Yorbis Borroto and Osvaldo Vazquez were joined by coach Roger Machado, who managed the Ciego d'Avila team in Prince George in 2013.
And, notably, the home plate umpire was Elber Ibarra of Cuba, who officiated in the World Baseball Challenge.
It's the people who were involved in Prince George, in getting the Cubans to come to the tournament and then served them while in the city, who know the relationships, and how they grew despite language barriers. Translators, hosts, bus drivers, volunteers, right down to those in the hotel and restaurant service industry, met the Cuban visitors and brought baseball diplomacy down to street level.
For the 30-plus members of each of the Cuban teams that played in the World Baseball Challenge, it's important to note that Prince George will always be a never-forgotten part of their life story.
In 2011, the Cuban national team played in mainland North America just once -- in Prince George. Youlieski Gourriel, a recent defector and regarded as one of the best Cuban players of all time, was on that team, and 30 MLB scouts were watching his every move. (There was a time the Cougars wouldn't welcome 30 NHL scouts in an entire season.)
These were world-class athletes, not just from Cuba but also from Taiwan, USA, Japan and Canada, at Citizen Field. Until the Pan-Am Games in Toronto last summer, the Cuban national team, or any significant team from the island, had only played in two Canadian cities since the turn of the century -- Prince George and Grand Forks.
And they've done it twice in Prince George.
You may not have known that every pitch of the Ciego d'Avila games played in 2013 was broadcast live in Cuba, taking streaming video feeds and converting them to rabbit-ears broadcast signals. When star outfielder Yoelbis Fiss hit a home run to end the championship game against Japan, there was dancing in the streets in Cuba.
More eyes have never, before or since, been trained on a broadcast from Prince George. They don't keep Nielson ratings in Cuba, but the entire island nation was captivated by what their teams were doing when they played in Prince George.
The memorable moments then-and-since are great stories - local bus mogul Paul Clermont saying hello to Jose Abreu, since defected and playing for the White Sox, at a MLB game in Chicago. (Everyone remembers the bus guy.) When Abreu was walking in the Walmart in Prince George, an agent approached him, handed him a cell phone and a business card that had "$60-Million" written on the back of it, an obvious attempt to spirit the big first baseman away.
Guess how much he signed for when he did defect? Six years, $58 million, with a $10 million signing bonus above that.
As the wall falls between the United States and Cuba, Obama's drive to leave this as a legacy of his presidency, and as trade and tourism opens in a way not seen since before Fidel Castro came to power, Prince George can remember its connection to Cuba and the role the city played in its own version of baseball diplomacy.
Play bol.
