The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball (review)

Though less than soccer and basketball, baseball is increasingly global, as seen in the 2009 World Baseball Classic (won for the second time by Japan), reports of two South Asians trying out with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Alan Klein’s survey of Major League Baseball’s efforts at Growing the Game (2006). But is baseball the same game with the same meaning everywhere it’s played? According to anthropologist Thomas Carter, it is not. The rules and on-field actions may be the same, but the performance context and the societal readings are different. In this case, “baseball embodies and projects a specific version of what it means to be Cuban, not only through swinging a bat or throwing a ball but through its delineation of social space and the everyday talk informed by such spaces” (p. 3). Carter’s objective, therefore, “primarily based on ethnographic fieldwork in several places around Havana” (p. viii), is to explain that “how Cubans create and interpret the cultural meanings of the actions on the baseball diamond shapes the narrative discourses of Cuba and cubanidad” (p. 16).

Important in the Cuban situation are the role of the state and the political functions of baseball. Even before 1959, baseball meant something special to many Cubans as part of the struggle to remove Spanish control, achieve modernity, and gain international recognition. The goal starting under Fidel Castro was to legitimate the Revolution and to further define Cuba and cubanidad. Revolutionary leaders have “continued to use baseball as a state-based discourse, equating passion for baseball with both cubanidad and socialismo” (p. 107).

Key to this is sporting event/baseball game as spectacle, similar to Caribbean carnival. Without spectators and fans there is no spectacle, and without spectacle there is no deeper meaning and longevity—a linking of past, present, and future in the national consciousness, as “sport spectacles serve as rituals of state to reinforce nationalistic discourses” (p. 110). Spectators/fans “have the greatest impact on the public discourse of baseball,” as they not only interact with the players to shape total game context, but they also “are the ones that recall and reproduce those events” through their passionate “baseball talk,” which is often poetic and laced with masculine sexual innuendos (p. 112). It is the fans who “determine the meanings and significance of any event in any given game” (p. 189).

However, not all Cuban fans accept the state-based discourse tied to state-sponsored athletic events, as “Cuban baseball is a constant contest in which the concept of cubanidad is waged” (p. 87). Consequently, while fans may agree on the centrality of baseball in cubanidad, they are “not a homogenous mob” (p. 128) and often differ on its meaning, a function of geography and/or social position. In essence, “there are multiple [contesting] Cuban identities” (p. 134), and “baseball rivalries serve as the perfect embodiment for such struggles” (p. 135). Linking baseball and politics in the discourse over cubanidad are calidad (quality) and lucha (struggle). Just as batters struggle with pitchers and are expected to do so with the proper attitude and style, Cuba since 1959 has struggled against imperialism and for survival after the collapse of the Soviet Union, while striving to build the model Cuban/socialist citizen. Part of that national effort has been through triumphant baseball players and teams, and other athletes.

In a way, I wish Carter had gone a little farther. What of those Cubans who do not cheer at the Estadio Latinoamericano for Industriales or debate in the Parque Central? Is baseball so prominent in their definition of Cuba and perception of cubanidad? What is the place of other sports and other cultural forms such as music, dance, theater, and food in Cubans’ views of themselves? Carter does acknowledge an “intersection of baseball and religion” (p. 120), assuming that baseball means something different to Cubans...