My first memories of playing baseball go back to 1955, when I was barely nine years old and with my fists as a bat, we used to connect a rubber ball in an improvised ground of two bases on any street in the neighborhood, which often disappeared above the roofs of the houses, with the dismay of having to suspend the meeting.
Also at that stage and much earlier, the children developed their street baseball clashes with balls made with a paper ball that took shape when lined with cardboard strips of cigarette packs and then hit with the palm of the hand, or with those built of rags, a kind of media that was already in disuse and was filled with any piece of cloth left over from the house.
Then we went to what was popularly called “pitenes” in the lots to which the highest quality students came, considered the basis of what we now know as massively and from which outstanding players always emerged, which subsequently triumphed among juveniles or greater.
This was the beginning in this exciting sport of most children of that time who began to dream of being a member of Habana or Almendares, the so-called eternal rivals of the professional Cuban championships, which occupied most of the news spaces sports then.
Few schools at that time could be represented by a team in any local or national competition, so most of the time you had to keep playing in the corner lot, taking care of the few gloves, balls and bats that appeared. Although since the middle of the last century Physical Education was practiced in Cuba in a developed way, it had a very limited popular reach.
According to data from the University of Physical Culture and Sport Science Manuel Fajardo (UCCFD), during the year of 1930 the Cuban Amateur Sports Organization ODAC was created, which was composed of black athletes and poor whites, junior categories and youth, who did not have facilities to practice and celebrate their competitions, not only in baseball, but also in other sports.
In 1931 the Children’s and Youth League was founded, which was maintained for more than 30 years, but with few organized events. From 1940 that association develops a popular national championship, called the Good Neighbor, among public schools, which in 1942, sees itself crowned the team of the public school number 8, of the city of Matanzas, directed by the pedagogue José Tomás Rodríguez. That team was headed by who would eventually be one of the great players of our country, Edmundo Amorós Isasi.
Also in 1942, the Intercollegiate Athletic Federation of Cuba (FAIC) emerged with the largest presence of private schools and soon after the National Athletic Federation appeared for professional schools of secondary education and secondary schools, which organized their events sporadically.
In that stage prior to 1959 one cannot speak of a well-organized and government-supported sport for the majority of the child population; only baseball, boxing or athletics was the most that could be practiced and, therefore, of the most outstanding, both nationally and internationally.
Other modalities such as basketball, volleyball, rowing, soccer and swimming were practiced at club level and most of the population did not have access to the practice of them.
The largest organization of student baseball before the triumph of the Revolution was the Intercollegiate Athletic Federation of Cuba, mainly in private schools, which had as its last director Dr. Frank Trelles, who also tried to extend the competitions to upper secondary schools and secondary schools of second teaching.
In 1957 the Little League was added to the sports program of the private schools of the capital, which is joined by the school La Progresiva, Cárdenas, the only school outside of Havana that participated in these tournaments for children under thirteen years of age. They remained active until 1961.
The so-called Little League (LLBI) is a non-profit American organization created in 1939 by Carl Stotz in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for children between four and twelve years old, which was formally registered on October 10th , 1950 and in 1957 was made international. In Cuba, it was represented by Optimist International, an association in which only high-income schools were enrolled.
Already at the end of the 50s, Bobby Maduro, a Jewish descendant who presided over the Cubans Sugar Kinds, triple-A baseball, was interested in the development of this sport in children and sponsored along with La Maltina, La Tropical brewery, the equivalent of the small leagues in Cuba, a program called Los Cubanitos.
Mako Pérez, who had been an instructor at the Miramar Yacht Club, was the driving force behind the league, while outstanding players Gilberto Torres and Silvio García served as advisers. The program covered the entire Island and kept close to five thousand children playing.
Some of those little baseball players would triumph in big baseball later, as were Atanasio “Tany” Pérez, included in the United States Hall of Fame; Felix Isasi; Santiago “Changa” Mederos and Manuel “Amorós” Hernández, among other highlights.
The province of Matanzas had payrolls in almost all municipalities, with a highlight for Jovellanos, Cárdenas and the city of Matanzas, which came to constitute four or more sets of quality each.In 1959 the team Tonito Rin Rin, by Jovellanos, under the direction of Eduardo Rodríguez, became the national champion of the League of Cubanitos.
When the INDER was created in 1961, there were notable changes in Cuban sport when the so-called “high performance pyramid” was implemented, with massive participation in competitions from the base to the national level, from which most of the country’s great champions had emerged in international appointments.
In the case of baseball, the foundation of special areas in the municipalities and the National School Games on August 22nd , 1963, contribute to the jump of quality in the minor categories, the first step of high performance sport.
Something historical and that will contribute to the formation of children under the age of thirteen occurred in Havana on March 6th , when a Memorandum of Understanding between the Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB) and the Little League (LLBI) was signed. opens the doors of the system of competencies of that organization to the small practitioners of our country, unique to Latin America and the Caribbean who were not inserted in it.
This program, which has more than 200 thousand local teams in 85 countries, up to the time of writing this work remains valid, as the National Baseball Commission clarified, since it has nothing to do with the MLB-FCB agreement, recently boycotted by the American authorities.
Although the main children’s competition, the School Games, is approaching, in which will be the most prominent of each province, the bustle of baseball in the different areas and land of the country will not stop thanks to thousands of children who make this sport their preferred, as a follow-up to those who preceded him.
Sources:
..Sports in Cuba: expression of a way of life. Taken from credc.inder.gob.cu
..Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings. beisbolparaiso@msn.com
… An institution of 80 years. Writing of Jit.
Archive of the author.
More Stories
Matanzas Pharmaceutical Museum, an essential appointment .
We can’t let the guard down with Covid-19 .
To my Mother, poem full of sensitivity and love .