Friday night, April 8, at the headquarters of the West Hartford Amateur Baseball Association, the Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, announced that “the most important relationships are the people to people relationships. Baseball has been one of the links between the US and Cuba, and is a good starting point for those relationships.”
His audience was not, on this occasion, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, of which he is a member. Rather it was a group of 18 adolescent baseball players, of between 13 and 14 years of age, their coaches and their parents, who will take a week-long trip to Holguin, a city located in the north-east region of the island.
The “landing” in the Holguin area was part of the USA-Cuba Goodwill Programme, and the principal promotors of the trip were the the nonprofit organisation Teen Cultures Connect, which is focused on connecting American teenagers with their peers from different latitudes.
Before the departure, Tim Brennan, coach to the youngest team and leader of the local programme in West Hartford , commented to the local press that the trip was not just about the students and their families – a group totalling 70 people – but also what they were taking with them: “750 pounds of baseball equipment, school supplies, musical instruments, and more. It’s going to be really fun to give as a present’.
One of the adolescents, Ben Giroux, the team’s receiver and a student at Conard Secondary confessed to West Hartford Magazine that he could not “wait to give a Cuban kid a baseball glove”.
When, finally, they left for Holguin on Saturday April 9th at 6:30 in the morning they had already studied and learned some words in Spanish and practiced bowling and strikes until they were doing them in their sleep. They got onto the buses heading to Montreal, Canada and then the available flights landed them in Havana. On the way they met ex Major League player Bill Spaceman Less, who decided to support the exchange running in both ways: after the trip to Holguin, Cuban baseball players should complete the cycle in the United States of America.
If any of the children or parents from Holguin who were among the hundreds of enthusiasts that received the American delegation in April, harboured any doubts about their trip in July, the doubt ended when they were sat on the plane. These young Cubans are now in American territory.
Hosted by local families in Connecticut, the Holguin baseball players and their companions (about whom no information is available) will play six games against teams from the towns of West Hartford, Hartford, Glastonbury and Newington. They will also participate in extra baseball activities including visiting Mark Twain’s house and Connecticut Science Centre. In addition, they will be able to attend a Boston Red Sox baseball game, play ball in the Cooperstown stadium, New York, and visit ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol.
It is not the first time that a children’s baseball team has run American bases. On this date, but in 2015, a children’s baseball team, for the first time, participated in the Disney International Tournament in Orlando, Florida. José Dariel Pito Abreu, Cuban Major League sensation, supported the Habaneros, a team made up of kids from the island’s capital. After showing off their skills in the Sunshine state the young Cubans visited Chicago and were able to attend a match between the White Socks and the Cubs.
That team, armed with kids from the Havana and Playa municipalities, already has a documentary film that recreates the moment. Soon, the Holguin players will have the mantel of this historic meeting taking place in thier province.
