Cuba stirred the politics in Miami, but U.S. won on field, 14-2, gliding to WBC title game | Opinion

Baseball and beisbol and passion and politics made for an intoxicating highball Sunday night in the Cuban national team’s first visit to Miami in more than 60 years.

The simple stuff first. A United States team festooned with MLB stars easily handled Cuba, 14-2, in a rout of a semifinal in the World Baseball Classic to advance to the championship game Tuesday night at Marlins Park. The Phillies’ Trea Turner crushed two more home runs just one night after his dramatic grand slam had eliminated Venezuela.

The Americans will face the winner of Monday night’s Japan-Mexico semifinal for a chance to win a second straight WBC trophy, baseball’s version of soccer’s World Cup.

The not so simple part? It was Cuba. Visiting Miami. In the heart of Little Havana, seat of the largest population of Cuban exiles in the country.

Drama was assured. And did not disappoint.

Should the Cuban team have even been here? Here, of all places on Earth? At the center of so much of the pain and anger that still lives here as an enduring echo of Fidel Castro and all he wrought?

Cuba’s team earned the right to be here, sure.

But that team’s oppressive government has earned no such right to use Miami as a stage for the propaganda arm that is its baseball team, albeit one that just got sort of embarrassed.

Not when more than 1,000 political prisoners remain in Cuban jails, many the loved ones of exiles in Miami, imprisoned for daring to speak out against a repressive Communist regime, or because they fell short in risking their lives to seek a way out in search of freedom.

Those political prisoners remain behind bars despite calls for their release from the U.S. government, The Vatican, European Union and human rights groups.

A great opportunity was lost.

The White House, Major League Baseball, the WBC, host Miami Marlins, city of Miami and Miami-Dade County should months ago have marshaled their collective might and played hardball with the Cuban government.

The message all along should have been that the Cuban baseball team was not welcome to compete in the WBC and never would be -- let alone in Miami! -- except in exchange for the negotiated release of a sufficient number of political prisoners wrongly held.

As it was, the only victory for Miami’s Cuban exiles and for freedom would have been if at least one member of the Cuban team had defected while here and sought asylum. Tight security exists to prevent that, of course.

The ideology of Castro remains in his appointed heirs, and that government’s signature sports team playing in Little Havana was polarizing to put it mildly.

Were the Cuban players traitors or heroes in the eyes of Miami? Did they represent the government or the people?

The full stadium of 35,779 fans seemed to like the Cuban team more than the protesters outside did. The crowd seemed evenly split in its allegiance, with maybe only a slight edge favoring Team USA.

But for every chant of “Cuba!” that quickly faded, more frequent and boisterous were chants of “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life), an exiles’ rallying cry against the Cuban government.

A fan ran onto the outfield in the sixth inning waving a bedsheet that bore the message, “Libertad para los Cubanos” -- Freedom for Cubans. He was escorted off to gusty cheering. (A second outfield interloper was apprehended just prior to a full-throated “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. Later came a third.)

Chants of “U-S-A!” also were frequent and merrily rousing, given the score.

Despite the protest outside the ballpark, the atmosphere inside was rather festive.

At one point both allegiances broke out in a celebratory The Wave, a veritable kumbaya moment. (Yes, we apparently are still doing The Wave in 2023.)

Sports are not as simple as they once were. You find moral issues across the games.

Anti-vaxxer tennis star Novak Djokovic was just ruled ineligible for the Miami Open even as the COVID threat is judged all but over. Should the NHL be allowing Russian players to continue playing while their country continues its heinous invasion of Ukraine? Transgender athletes are at the center of rancorous debate.

Now, here, Cuba’s appointed president Miguel Diaz Canel gives a pep talk to the team and sends it off to Miami, with four major league players are on the roster, a first

U.S. manager Mark DeRosa spoke to his team of the combustible political climate for Sunday night’s game on the bus ride to the stadium.

“I was asking Team USA officials what to expect,” he said. “They said they will be ready for it. I am more focused on play on the field, Cuba’s style of play. I can’t take my mind to worrying about that [other] stuff.”

American third baseman Nolan Arenado is of Cuban heritage, so it hit closer to home for him. Before Arenado was born his grandfather has his business confiscated and spent three years in a Cuban jail.

“We had a long discussion this morning about it,” he said of he and family. “To be quite honest with you, there’s a lot of anxious feelings. I don’t know, we had a long discussion about it. We’re excited to play Cuba, and, you know, if it wasn’t for the sacrifices my grandparents made to get here for my parents, I don’t know if I would have been the player that I am today. So there’s a lot of feelings I feel toward it. But we have a job to do. So we got to put that aside and take care of business.”

Cuban manager Armando Johnson, asked about the “politicization” of Cuba’s visit, said, “We are focused for the game. We don’t think about what they say out there or possible aggression. We are prepared for everything. If [the crowd] do not support us, this could feed us.”

For many here, the team (and what it represents) was not welcome.

Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo called himself ‘outraged” and called the Cuban team playing here “the utmost disrespect to the entire Cuban exile community.”

Miami YouTube influencer Alexander Otaola has used his show to plan protests Sunday outside and inside the stadium, telling the Herald, “We are doing it so the team that will come here representing the dictatorship understands that we don’t like accomplices.”

The city of Miami granted permits for at least two protest near the stadium.

Saturday, dozens of Cubans demonstrated on Calle Ocho in a showing organized by exile group Vigilia Mambisa, which brought its “Mambisa steamroller” (only in Miami!) to flatten bats and baseballs. One protester’s home-drawn sign read, Libertad para los presos politicos en Cuba (Freedom for political prisoners in Cuba.)

The game went on, but it was not as usual.

Never is when Cuba and Little Havana mix.