MATANZAS, Cuba • During a visit by Major League Baseball to Cuba engineered for symbolism, it doesn’t get richer than Antonio “Tony” Castro, son of iconic president Fidel, taking a jersey and a cap from Cubans in the stands and carrying the items, personally, for an autograph from a player who defected a few years ago.
In that moment Thursday at Estadio Victoria de Giron, Castro skirted around chairs, television camera equipment, and other obstacles to build a connection between Cuban fans and a Cuban player, Jose Abreu, who a short time ago was not welcome home after leaving Cuba for Major League Baseball. With so many complications, Castro was, literally, the only person who could bridge that gap to land the prize.
It captured well the role a son of the revolution may yet play in baseball diplomacy.
“This encounter we’ve had, this new relationship that we’re starting to foster between the Cuban Baseball Federation and Major League Baseball and the players’ association, gives us an indication of things we need to do now and into the future,” Castro said Thursday morning during a rare interview with U.S. journalists. “We’re conscious of what baseball means. What we’ve experienced today and what we’ve experienced these last couple of days is very exciting. … As you’ve seen, the baseball stadiums have been open, and fans have come to watch the clinics as if they were games.
“This is just the beginning,” he added. “I hope one day to be able to say, ‘Well done.’”
Major League Baseball’s three-day goodwill tour in Cuba came to an official end Thursday at a bright red ballpark more than an hour’s drive from Havana. The traveling party, which included eight active players, four of whom are Cuban, and officials from the commissioner’s office and union, returns to Miami early Friday morning. The last public event of their visit was a clinic with about 150 youth players from the Matanzas area.
At every event, from clinics to meals, and expected to be there Friday at the airport to bid them farewell has been Tony Castro, a most enthusiastic host.
On the Matanzas field, Castro held repeated conversations with MLB officials Joe Torre and Dan Halem. He talked to union chief Tony Clark. He popped from group to group, posing for pictures with fans, snapping pictures of his own, and rarely misplacing his grin. Above the stadium’s scoreboard, which locals call Palacio de los Cocodrilos (The Palace of the Crocodiles) for the home team’s mascot, a Cuban flag flew beside a U.S. flag near a large picture of Fidel Castro in a batting stance.
It was an unplanned but remarkable way to mark the year anniversary of the first step in a thaw between Cuba and the United States. On Dec. 17, 2014, a joint declaration from President Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro, Tony’s uncle, agreed to normalize relations.
“Everybody should be happy because, through baseball, we’re uniting countries. This should be a happy day for everybody,” Castro said of the anniversary. “We’ll work so that one day we can say this is just one of many anniversaries. We don’t work to celebrate anniversaries. We work to live in a normal world, where we can all live in peace through the game of baseball.”
Throughout this trip, a first for Major League Baseball since 1999, officials have stressed that it is a chance to begin relationships that could bring change.
Decades of strained relations between the two countries have created enough scar tissue for a barrier reef off the coast of Florida. More than 50 years of the U.S. embargo on Cuba has isolated it and, on the smaller scale, its players from the majors. Major League Baseball and its union seek a safer, legal way for the best Cuban players to play professionally in the States, and they need to triangulate negotiations with the Cuban baseball federation and the two governments to make it happen. It is, as baseball’s chief legal official Halem has said, “complex.”
Personalities can help negotiate the jagged edges of politics.
Personalities like Tony Castro.
“He really is in love with baseball and wants things to happen between the two countries, baseball-related,” said Torre, a Hall of Famer and Major League Baseball’s chief baseball officer. “You can sense a guarded conversation (and) he just feels very open in having discussions. I don’t think there’s any question the key to anything getting accomplished is the comfort of talking to each other. I know Dan and he’s just had conversations – out on the field, sitting at the lunch table – nothing official but basically feeling each other out. Where can we land that both favor?”
Clark echoed that sense: “A lot of times you can send an email or send a text or have a phone conversation but there’s a level of respect shown and demonstrated when you’re willing to have dialogue eye to eye. I hope that a big part of what is happening here is everybody is getting a chance to put names with faces, appreciate each person’s responsibility in that conversation and even perhaps each other’s vanishing point. That as much as anything away from what has been happening between the lines has truly been beneficial.”
Castro has long been an advocate for Cuban players and their right to play professionally abroad. He even helped ease restrictions on Cubans going to other professional leagues, though the U.S. still prohibits Cubans in the majors unless they defect. One of Fidel’s eight sons, Tony Castro is an orthopedic surgeon and has served as the team physician for the Cuban national team. He became a vice president for the International Baseball Federation in 2009, and has remained with the organization even as it changed names to the World Baseball Softball Confederation. He now serves on the executive board as the WBSC’s global ambassador. To the crowd Thursday he was introduced as the “world ambassador of baseball.”
During his 13-minute talk with U.S. reporters in Cuba to cover MLB’s visit, Castro took the opportunity to lobby for one of his pet projects: returning baseball to the Olympics.
“Since it never should have been taken out,” he said.
Castro gave the interview in Spanish and used a translator. He was careful with his words but did not hide his excitement. At one point, he was asked about his father and he smiled.
“We’re just talking baseball,” Tony said. “He’s a baseball fan.”
He avoided a question about welcoming back players who had defected, saying everyone “within that range” — from kid playing baseball to Hall of Famer — would be “welcome” if their purpose is growing the game. The young Castro did acknowledge that the fans and the players would like to see all Cuban-born players combine for a unified team in the World Baseball Classic, and he did not rule that out.
“Don’t separate Cuban players,” he said. “They’re all Cubans.”
After Castro had finished talking with the reporters and left a small room tucked away under the stands behind home plate, Torre, from a comfy chair, chided him for attracting the media. The visit to Cuba, Torre’s first, has brought back memories of Orlando Hernandez, the Cuban pitcher Torre’s Yankee Dynasty had. Torre recalled how competitive El Duque was, starting with his confusion the first time Torre came out to remove from the game. Early in his career with the Yankees, Hernandez had a screaming match with catcher Jorge Posada in the dugout.
Later that night, Torre saw them “arm in arm” entering a restaurant.
“I appreciate it because it doesn’t mean you have to love each other to work together,” Torre said. “There’s a good example.”
Torre’s story offered another symbol.
Even acrimony can yield to the right personalities — and a meal.
“When we initially spoke with Major League Baseball, we had the idea of doing clinics and some games, and establishing a new work relationship where everything that we do is geared toward the development of the game,” Castro said. “Like I’ve repeated several times: This is part of the new relationships. Let’s see what happens in the future. We’re not Nostradamus.”
Derrick Goold @dgoold on Twitter dgoold@post-dispatch.com
