‘Baseball is life’ for Cuban players
Different country, same game for 4 Panthers players who grew up living, breathing national sport in Cuba
KITCHENER — The players shuffle into the training complex and begin to stretch, looking like they’ve done this a thousand times before.
Then two buckets of baseballs appear, and for a moment these men are like boys again — chirping each other, playing catch, whistling and laughing and cracking jokes in rapid-fire Spanish.
Like most Cubans kids, Yulexis La Rosa, Yorbis Borroto, Noelvis Entenza and Ian Rendon all grew up wanting to be baseball players. On their island, the sport they play is more than just a game. It’s religion, love, politics, joy, agony and grief all rolled into one.
“Baseball is life,” said Rendon, a left-handed pitcher who plays for the Havana Industriales back home.
The four came to Canada to play for the Kitchener Panthers of the Intercounty Baseball League this summer in part because they wanted to test themselves against players from other countries.
On their island, they’re stars, playing in Cuba’s top National League. They were all groomed from a young age to play the sport, and most of them had family ties to the game.
Borroto, a smooth-fielding shortstop who covers his position like an acrobat, began at age five by practising in his family’s living room. His father played in Cuba’s provincial league, and taught him all about the game. By age 10 he was enrolled in a special sports academy that turned kids into national team players.
“My father always wanted me to be a baseball player, too,” said the 32 year old, through translator Veronica Jimenez Munoz.
Rendon’s father played for the Industriales, which are something like the New York Yankees of Cuba, although the son never got to see his dad play. As a boy he asked his father to teach him the game, and was sternly told that baseball was serious business.
That approach is still evident in the way the Cubans approach the game. They play with obvious joy, but also focused discipline.
“My father said: ‘Listen to me. I’m going to take you to the field. If you are good, you will continue, but if you are not good, that’s the end of this,’” said Rendon, 30.
La Rosa, 37, was spotted at age 11 by a coach at school.
By 16, La Rosa was being mentored by Lázaro Pérez Agramonte, considered one of the best Cuban catchers of all time.
La Rosa says he switched to catcher a few years earlier after he watched his team’s overweight backstop get run over and sat on during a game.
“I told the coach, I’m going to be the catcher now.”
Noelvis, the big, burly righthander who started his career as an outfielder, began playing at age six. His father played for a local municipal team, but his brotherin-law taught him the game’s finer points.
As a boy, he also played soccer and took taekwondo, but a career in baseball was the only real goal.
As for Entenza: “I always knew,” says the 32-year-old.
“Every boy dreams about playing baseball, about playing for their provincial team, and eventually, the national team.”
Baseball dominates every day life in Cuba. It is the only sport that really matters, and gets equal coverage in the news as world events.
When the national team loses, the entire country is “grieving,” La Rosa said.
“You have no idea what a defeat means to a Cuban,” said the Panthers’ quiet catcher, who lives on a horse farm outside of Villa Clara. “We are embarrassed when we lose. It’s humiliating.”
Coming from such a baseball-obsessed island, it’s no wonder the Cubans play the game with their passions on full display. In Cuba, everything is louder — the players, the music, the conversations, the stadiums.
Fans seem quieter, more reserved here, much like Canadians in general. Back home, they’ll play in front of crowds of 20,000 or more, with brass bands and drummers and thousands of people blowing on horns that creates a raucous cacophony from the stands.
At Jack Couch Park, they’re usually playing in front of crowds in the hundreds, not thousands. They hope that changes as the Panthers pursue their first league championship since 2001.
“We want bring them a championship, and we want the fans to come support us. We feed off that energy,” said Borroto.
Entenza and Rendon are teammates on the Industriales, but La Rosa and Borroto are rivals who play for other teams in the same league.
This summer, however, they’re all roommates, sharing a fourbedroom townhouse at the University of Waterloo.
They’ve quickly become close, living almost like brothers. Try to ask a serious question about his roommates, and Borroto pokes his head out from the Kitchen to a shout out a joke in Spanish.
“He’s the easiest one to get out,” responds Entenza, laughing.
The four share cooking duties, although Entenza only cooks one thing — spaghetti. He claims he gets stuck with most of the dish duties. Most meals, they’ll share plates of rice dishes with roasted meat and vegetables. La Rosa is the best cook, they all agree.
Once in a while, they’ll have a barbecue or go for a cerveza at Ethel’s, a Waterloo bar that usually has a ball game on TV. Occasionally, they relax with a Cuban cigar, which they brought from home. The cigars here just aren’t the same.
“Of course,” says Borroto, with a shrug.
They spend a lot of their downtime chatting with family in Cuba, or sometimes making public appearances at local schools with the Panthers. La Rosa has also been studying YouTube instructional videos on tying horse harnesses — a luxury in an Internet-restricted Cuba.
But most of their time in Canada is focused around one thing: baseball — either training for it, talking about it, or playing it. They spend several hours every day working out at the YMCA, and training at Playball Academy Canada, an indoor baseball facility in Kitchener.
“They take it very seriously,” said Mike Boehmer, the Panthers director who orchestrated the deal that brought them here. “They’re very disciplined athletes, because that’s the way they were brought up, and that’s how they train.”
Boehmer also looks after the Cubans while they’re here, buying them groceries and driving them around town, and to trips around the province. They affectionately
call him “Grampa” and tease him about his short-cropped haircut.
The Cubans say they’ve been embraced by their Canadian teammates — they’re “familia” now, Rendon says — and are enjoying their time here, even if the language barrier can be a bit isolating. That’s why they love playing against London and Barrie, who also have Spanish-speaking players on their rosters.
Some games there’s a whole second conversation going on around the field that most of the Canadian players would be hardpressed to understand.
“It’s good the umpires don’t speak Spanish, otherwise we’d be kicked out,” La Rosa says with a laugh.
Three of the four players are fathers, and say it’s difficult explaining to their kids why they’re away, playing baseball in a northern country. Entenza, the only non-parent, says he misses his grandmother, too.
“We miss them all the time,” said Rendon, who has a fouryear-old daughter.
They’re allowed to be here because the Cuban government is softening its stance on players going abroad. This is the second year Cuban players have come to Kitchener for the summer, while a national team of Cuban players has been touring the independent Can-Am League this season.
In the past, the only way Cuban players could play for foreign teams was to defect. La Rosa, Borroto, Entenza and Rendon, meanwhile, are all here under a unique arrangement that allows their Cuban teams to loan them to the Panthers for their offseason.
They’ll return to Cuba in late August, after the Panthers season ends.
“We are grateful the government made that change, because it’s an opportunity for Cuban players to know how the game is played in other countries,” La Rosa said. “It’s something every Cuban athlete wants to do, to test their quality in an international arena.”
The catcher says they feel a little bit like their country is watching this experiment with the Kitchener Panthers, and there’s some pressure to perform well.
But playing baseball? That’s the easy part. Baseball always comes naturally to Cubans, he said.
“In a certain way, a Cuban always has that bug inside that they have to do it right. Internally, we feel that pressure, but it’s more personal,” La Rosa said. “Since you were a kid, you’re taught if you’re going to do something, do it right.”