Cheers, Boos, and Protests: Cuban Baseball Returns to Miami

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here in the United States, baseball is known as the national pastime. In Cuba, however, it’s something even bigger: baseball is part of their national identity. And there is no place where questions of Cuban identity and heritage take more center stage than Miami, the center of the Cuban diaspora in the United States. It’s been more than 60 years since the Cuban national team played a game in Miami, not since Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959…and their return brought back the complex feelings of pride, anger, and so much more within Cuban Americans. So today, Alden Gonzalez takes us inside a city, a community, and a stadium where emotions are running high…and easy answers are nowhere to be found. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Alden Gonzalez, you were there in Miami on Sunday night when Cuba lost the United States
0:06.9	14 to two in the semi-finals of the World Baseball Classic.
0:11.6	I have to say you've done some incredible work in Miami on a topic that is emotional,
0:18.7	it's political, it's fascinating, but it's also really complicated.
0:24.5	And the one piece of your reporting though that really stuck out to me was this short video
0:30.2	you took outside of the stadium before the game even started.
0:36.2	Can you walk us through that video, what it sounded like, what it looked like, what it felt
0:41.5	like outside of the stadium before Cuba played United States?
0:45.1	Yeah, I don't think you can tell from that video, but it took place.
0:52.6	I'm talking maybe 15 feet from the gate to enter the ballpark.
0:57.4	And I don't think there's a better encapsulation of how complicated this situation actually is.
1:05.5	Then to walk directly outside of the stadium within those gates and to see a lot of fans
1:12.3	donning Cuban jerseys, Cuban caps, flags draped around their back wanting to support the Cuban
1:20.2	team and then stepping outside and seeing more than 100 protesters outside chanting
1:27.3	libidad and patrera y viva and chance against the team but more broadly chance against the
1:35.6	government in Cuba.
1:44.1	I saw somebody about my father's age.
1:47.0	He kept yelling and yelling, trying to fire up the crowd and he almost felt like almost
1:51.3	emotionally shaken while doing these things.
1:54.8	You could feel so much passion in his voice.
1:57.4	I saw in that gentleman, somebody who would love to be able to just cheer for a baseball
2:03.6	team that's representing the country where he grew up but can't separate that baseball
	...

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