Vanessa Bauza

HAVANA · It is high noon on Thursday and despite the sparsely populated stadium, there is a sense of history about this ball game.

"Winning," says left fielder Jusdelbys Rodríguez, "would be something so big, I don't have the words for it."

The game is close. But with each crack of the bat Rodríguez's team, the Westerners, falls further behind until their rivals, the Easterners, seal the deal with an 8-6 win.

She and her teammates burst into sobs. Tears streak their dusty faces, while across the field, in the visitors' dugout, the winners reapply a shared lipstick before stepping forward to receive their medals.

These are the best women ballplayers from either end of the island and they have faced off for the first time in a national forum, the "Olympiad of Cuban Sports."

Having abandoned their bats and gloves a half-century ago when two short-lived teams folded, Cuban women are now back on the field, and no one seems to mind that they have defied Tom Hanks' dictum from the 1992 movie A League of Their Own: "There's no crying in baseball!"

Like their counterparts in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was created in 1943 to keep stadiums profitable during World War II, Cuba's skirt-wearing pre-Revolutionary ballplayers drew curious crowds in a country where baseball is the national pastime.

"We started from zero, we didn't know the rules," said former third base(wo)man Elena Castellanos, 73. She still keeps an envelope full of black-and-white photos carefully labeled by her mother, the "Cuban Stars" chaperone, with the name of each town the team toured: Camaguey June 8, 1947; Manicaragua Aug. 3, 1947; Cardenas April 18, 1948.

"Every time we went somewhere people applauded us," recalled Castellanos, who was paid as much as 30 pesos per game depending on attendance. "We would sing on the bus and tell stories. We were always causing trouble; we were young. I wish I could go back and play baseball again. They were the best years."

In 1947, then league President Max Carey caused a sensation when he brought 156 Midwestern players to Havana for spring training. Bohemia, Cuba's most popular magazine at the time, remarked that some of the American women, "in addition to playing the game to perfection, could also enter a beauty contest."

Castellanos played in a seven-inning exhibition game against the Americans, using the slightly larger baseball preferred by the American women rather than the standard-size ball the Cubans were accustomed to. The teams tied 5-5, despite the Cubans' disadvantage.

Carey also recruited at least four Cuban ballplayers. Most returned home after the American league disbanded in 1954.

"The girls who came up to the U.S. came for economic reasons, but it was a hard life for many of them," said Baseball Hall of Fame curator John Odell. "A couple of the teams had a pair of Cubans, but often there was only one. If she didn't know how to speak English there was no one to translate."

In Cuba, women's baseball also splintered in the late 1950s, and many players joined other sports. Veteran Cuban player Dula Aurora Martinez, 75, said she, like many of her colleagues, retired after meeting her husband.

"It wasn't like now that women are liberated," said Martinez, a guest of honor at Thursday's game. "Back then there were a lot of prejudices. I traded sports for marriage."

Fifty years later, some things have changed, others have not.

"Some people criticize this. They say they've never seen women playing baseball. But haven't you seen women riding tractors and working in the cane fields?" said Marta Martinez, who sat in the stands during the playoffs cheering her daughter Losnay Sanchez, 24, a center fielder on the western team.

Margarita Mayeta, national director for women's baseball, said thousands of women have been recruited into municipal teams organized last year.

"People see baseball as something for men. No, that can't be," Mayeta said. "We convince them we can do anything without loosing our feminine tenderness."

Many of the players selected for the eastern and western teams are physical education teachers in their mid-20s. Others are factory workers or stay-at-home moms who grew up playing ball in their neighborhoods alongside their brothers.

"I dedicate this win to my daughters at home," said Elaine Cuello Mesa, 27, a former softball player from eastern Holguin province, who was chosen most valuable pitcher of the national selection. "This runs in our blood. My grandfather played baseball barefoot."

Kenia Jimenez, 26, said she "never put a glove on my hand" until her family encouraged her to try out for Havana's team. Now, she practically dreams of baseball. "Sitting at home, I go over techniques, how to be better. It's like an obsession," Jimenez said.

Within the first week of practice she chipped a front tooth when she was hit in the mouth with a ball. "I said to myself, `I have to keep going, I can't be afraid of the ball,'" she said.

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com

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