The beautiful visuals of Cuban baseball – Sporting News

Relations between the United States and Cuba continue to thaw after more than a half century of acrimony, and baseball is helping to facilitate this transition.

On Tuesday, the Rays will play an exhibition game against the Cuban National Team. Among the spectators will be President Barack Obama, a truly historic moment that will once again shine a light on the island nation’s love for baseball.

Cuba is a land full of visual contrasts and paradoxes. Decay and beauty coexist side-by-side everywhere. An outlier in an increasingly homogenized world, todays Cuba is relatively advertising free, although it was a hotbed of consumer culture in the years prior to Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959.

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Professional baseball flourished in Cuba for more than 80 years. Team logos, uniforms, advertising, and ephemera similarly thrived. The imagery associated with this era is full of personality and color, testament to the intense local passion for the sport.

Obama and the Rays will be visiting Estadio Latinoamericano, a 55,000 seat stadium that first opened its gates in 1946. A fitting metaphor for the country itself, the stadium is a throwback, a completely different experience than that of any modern American professional ballpark. There are no giant video boards, but there are lots of wooden seats, and lots of ghosts. This is where Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers spent Spring Training in 1947, shortly before his historic major league debut.

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The stadium also played host to the AAA International League Havana Sugar Kings, from 1954-60. Their mascot, “Beisbolito,” was prominently featured on a range of goods during that era. The team won a championship in 1959 before being moved to Jersey City in the middle of the following season, a reaction to Castro’s nationalization of American-owned enterprises.

I visited Havana in December 1999, months after the most recent visit to Cuba by an MLB team (the Baltimore Orioles played the Cuban National Team in March of that year, winning 3-2.) My trip took place in conjunction with the publication of the definitive pictorial history of Cuban baseball, “Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball,” a book that I designed. I traveled there with authors Peter Bjarkman and Mark Rucker, friends who knew the place, knew people there, and knew how to navigate the unique dynamics of visiting the country. (Our publisher was John Thorn, now official historian for Major League Baseball.)

Armed with a license from the U.S. Treasury Department, we ate, slept, talked, and watched baseball. We went to several games at Estadio Latinoamericano, as well as youth league games at ballparks in the Guanabacoa and Regla sections of Havana. The designer in me found visual inspiration everywhere. My having worked on the book for the better part of a year provided me with some small sense of what to expect.

As the eyes of the world turn to Cuba and the to president’s visit, much of the focus will be on the future, and that’s understandable. But the past will also loom large. Images of pre-Cuban revolution American cars will doubtlessly dominate news coverage, and references will be made to the Havana that was depicted in “The Godfather: Part II.” (It should be noted that Cubans are the most resourceful auto mechanics on earth — consider what’s required to keep Eisenhower-vintage cars running with no access to parts or hard currency.)

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The island’s baseball’s rich visual culture should play a part too, with a nod to the inevitable. Someday Cuba will be host to Starbucks and Wal Marts and jumbotrons and outfield walls covered with ads, as opposed to revolutionary slogans. While certain aspects of the coming change will no doubt be welcome, the unique optics that have traditionally surrounded Cuban baseball are surely something to savor before all of this goes down.