Seduced by fútbol

LAS TUNAS – Cubans have surrendered at the foot of the World Cup soccer tournament whose prominence can only be compared to that of the Olympic Games. The event is the top of an industry that moves billions of dollars on a global scale under the control of a large consortium: FIFA. With regard to the games in Russia 2018, a well-trodden path would be to discuss whether soccer would have displaced baseball, or not, as a preferred sport in this Archipelago. However, I refuse to discuss that dichotomy because I enjoy the adrenaline of the goal as much as the sudden excitement of the home run.

Let’s try to examine the matter from another perspective — not as the clash between the practice of two sports that in their conception are diametrically opposed. Let’s focus then on the interaction that is taking place in the same social scenarios of two shows that seem to have a different meaning for the Cuban public. The key lies not in the preeminence of one or the other sport, but in what people see — in their perceptions.

The Cuban public has enjoyed every single World Cup match since 1990, provided by the government at no cost. In the last two decades this practice has been extended to include league games of some of the best, most popular leagues in Europe, which include Spain, Germany, and to a lesser extent Italy and England. At the same time, people’s access to information networks and the growing cultural industry that surrounds international soccer has increased.

We have high quality fútbol practically year round in all the informative and commercial platforms, official or not, of the country. The media agenda is unable to evade addressing even the smallest detail relating to players, coaches and teams, beyond even what deals with the sport itself. These factors add up to the fact that Cuban fans can recite even intimate details of players who make up a Spanish club, for example. And yet they’re not capable of naming who plays for the teams in their own back yard, or even the national squad.

Fans who claim to be fútbol aficionados are in fact connected to a type of football that comes to them in a flash, full of intrigue and curiosity, loaded with gossip and rumors, adorned with high definition cameras and played on an impeccably maintained green lawn.

Meanwhile, Cuban baseball is on a downturn. And not because our media coverage has declined, but because of the lower quality. The sport, in fact, is still covered widely. And yet, at the conclusion of our National Series, or with the selection of our national team, not even the fútbolers on the island can refrain from commenting on what has happened.

It just so happens that baseball is still socially significant and even of state importance here. And though it goes against the grain, due to the poor transmission circuits to the U.S., Cuba gets to see the World Classic games every four years, and now, with great timidity and usually delayed, we catch a glimpse of Major League Baseball. 

What would happen if we also had the best baseball in the world live on TV year-round? Sports pundits point to this as a solution that could reignite baseball on the Island. And still, even this may not be enough to overtake the spectacle of fútbol due to that sport’s considerable communicational and symbolic power. At the same time, though, there is enough evidence of the existence of very particular social and even idiosyncratic fiber in the Cuban people that, for now, support baseball as an expression of national pride. That could explain why people still like the sport despite the comparative modesty of the show.

The question is also one of the imagination. Before the Cuban public, the stars of the international fútbol circuit are to a certain extent distant, like those of a Hollywood movie, because the likelihood of our own unknown fútbol players ever approaching that status will always be quite low. So individuals follow them from a distance while accepting that they are witnessing an impeccably presented sports show, which they know they will not be a part of.

Meanwhile, Cuban media already speaks naturally of American baseball, but it seems more politically correct to concentrate on the events of a sport that arrives from the conveniently distant Europe than from the very close United States. Certainly Major League Baseball reflects the way of life of this country, putting aside the obvious burden of paradigms, especially by Cuban baseball players who today figure in the elite rosters of both the National and American Leagues; although looking at it closely something similar happens when we concentrate on Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi.

Since 2014, at least 349 Cuban baseball players have migrated in search of the dream of playing in the Major Leagues. That has occurred without MLB live in Cuba, or signs of an eventual change in the U.S. laws that force these players to leave their country of origin definitively to try their luck on American soil. These players also do it because they feel that they are likely to achieve their aspirations. It does not matter that, in fact, very few players reach the Big Leagues. But it is enough for them to dream of attaining this goal.

Cubans, for their part, have accepted the tacit fact of enjoying that foreign sport with the same intensity and passion with which they suffer and enjoy the daily vicissitudes of what happens on the Island. Current and future generations more focused on appearances over essence, and concerned with form and not content, could eventually concentrate exclusively on fútbol, leaving our limited baseball spectacle as a refuge for those filled with nostalgia of glorious and past times. Hopefully not.