My friend, who cares not about baseball, asked me last week what normalized American relations with Cuba would mean for the MLB.
And my skin tingled.
Some facts to ponder:
The MLB has been in Canada. Still is. So foreign countries aren’t a problem.
Washington, DC has a team, and it’s not even a state.
Cuba is closer to continental USA than Montreal was.
Cuba has a large and INCREDIBLY COMMITTED fan base, and their players had to leap over the defection hurdle to get to play, so there are likely more professional calibre players than that 181.
If Cuba gets a team, the DR and PR would have a pretty strong case of “us too.” Then maybe Mexico and Venezuela.
Pat Neshek of the Oakland Athletics looks to the sky as he touches the patch with the letters “GJN” on it after he recorded the final out of the bottom of the seventh inning against the Detroit Tigers during Game 1 of the American League Division Series at Comerica Park on October 6, 2012 in Detroit, Michigan. The patch worn by all the members of the Athletics is in memory of Neshek’s son Gehrig John, who died 23 hours after birth on October 3.
In the mid 1980s, WP Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe dragged me back to my childhood love of baseball. The last team I played on was the Athletics, styled after the Oakland A’s.
Even though it’s not Thanksgiving in the USA, it is here. A great Thanksgiving gift to me is about what kind of richer bonds are forming around the Oakland A’s after their pitcher, Pat Neshek‘s family tragedy last week. Their son died last week after only 23 hours of life. This is an unthinkably brutal loss. Then he pitched Friday night. Stunning.
Pat Neshek was overcome with emotion when he found out his teammates were taking the field wearing patches honouring his late son.
“I’ll be honest — I completely broke down,” Neshek said. “I can’t believe the support I’ve gotten from the team and my teammates. I couldn’t be doing this without that.”
From all this, I feel we should all strive to be worthy enough to be able to be this supportive when those close to us experience loss. And I’m thankful that I have this kind of people in my life already.
De-Spinning the Political and Re-Spinning it for Social, Economic and Political Justice
So, there have been 181 Major League Baseball players from Cuba [population 11 million], 230 from Puerto Rico [population 3.5 million] [which is kind of like America, despite its second class political status], and 557 from the Dominican Republic [population 9.5 million].
