Can Baseball Help Improve U.S.-Cuban Diplomacy?
While we’re still reveling from the Yankees winning the World Series, The Associated Press poses this timely question: “Can baseball help bring US and Cuba together?”
Referring to it as “baseball diplomacy,” the AP reports that Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos hopes to hold exhibition games with the Cuban national team this spring, much like he did in Havana and Baltimore ten years ago.
“Hopefully as next spring approaches, both governments will see clearer to improve the relations and make it rather easy for there to be a reciprocal arrangement,” Angelos told the AP. “Personally, I think the relations between the two countries should be clearly and emphatically re-established.”
Cuba is known for dominating the sport; they’ve won gold medals 25 times in the Baseball World Cup Championships — the most out of any country — although the U.S. triumphed over Cuba in 2009.
Yale Professor Roberto González Echevarría, who authored The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, says the sport is considered more of national pastime in Cuba than in America (if that’s possible!).
“It was considered modern, democratic and American, while the Spaniards had bullfighting, which was retrograde and barbaric. It’s as if the American founding fathers had been wielding Louisville Sluggers,” Echevarria has told The New York Times.
What do you think? Is baseball a good “diplomatic tool” for helping to bridge relations between the U.S. and Cuba?
