Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey Into the Heart of Cuban Sports [Hardcover]

S.l. Price (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2000

In an artful pastiche of observation, personal narrative, interviews, and investigative reporting, S.L. Price, a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, describes sports and athletes in today's Cuba. On his many journeys to the island, Price finds a country that celebrates sports like no other and a leader who uses athletics as both symbol and weapon in his country's dying revolution.

With Castro's regime staggering beneath the weight of a great depression and international sanctions, Cuba's famed sports machine is imploding. Athletes are defecting by plane and raft. Superstars bike to games and train with shoddy equipment in bare gyms; and champion boxers, baseball players, and gymnasts are forced to scrounge for spare change on the streets. In 1959, when Castro rose to power, he declared a new era in Cuban baseball. Within four years all professional Cuban sports had been outlawed, and Castro condemned as traitors those athletes who defected to the United States in search of product endorsements and six-figure salaries.

In interviews with Teofilo Stevenson, Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, and Ana Quirot, S.L. Price unearths the truth about sports in Cuba and explores the complex reasons that drive athletes of promise to flee their homeland. Beyond an examination of sports in the hothouse of revolution, Pitching Around Fidel presents a vibrant and realistic portrait of Cuba today, complete with sex-happy toursits, blackouts, Fidel's famous former lover, and Charles Hill, a black nationalist fugitive wanted in the United States for murder and hijacking. At once a biting travelogue and a meditation on sports in both America and Cuba, Pitching Around Fidel is a valuable document about a time and a place that are close to fading away.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At the core of Cuban sports is an enigma that Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price captures in two sentences. The first part of it "holds that the great Cuban sports machine--instrument of totalitarian control and propaganda--is rightfully cracking apart. The second holds that Castro's regime not only has produced an unparalleled athletic system, but has also fostered a sports purist's delight, an American ideal, no less, for Cuba is one of the last places where athletes play for little more than love of the game." How is that possible? Pitching Around Fidel smartly aligns the contradictions. It's a provocative and penetrating look at the most fascinating and rabid sports culture on the planet, why sports in Cuba works, why it doesn't, and how its marvelous and gifted athletes are torn between the loyalties of home and the whiff of money 90 miles across the sea.

Cuban athletes have been put on a pedestal since Castro took power, and their achievements on the international stage have swelled the national chest and been interpreted as triumphs over capitalism. Yet as conditions on the embargoed island deteriorate, athletes who complain are banished to oblivion, while others--think Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the Yankees and Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez--flee for freedom and cash. Price's reportage on how freedom and money have changed many of the exiles, Ordonez most notably, is stunning. And still, despite rundown facilities and repatched equipment, Cuba keeps turning out remarkable athletes and loyal fans.

Examining the state of sports on the island, Price is in effect examining the state itself, and his own relationship to sports--and the big money of American sports--in the process. While the portrait he paints is not pretty, it is fascinating. There's much poignance in the joy that emanates from Cuba's playing fields, the passion in the stands, and the shabbiness Price observes in the appearance of the great Teofilo Stevenson--the multi-Olympic heavyweight champion and the island's reigning sports icon. Not even an icon can override the revolution's contradictions. --Jeff Silverman

From Library Journal

Price, a writer for Sports Illustrated, made many trips to Cuba and interviewed countless athletes, fans, and politicos for this fascinating account of contemporary Cuban sports. During Castro's rule, his country has produced myriad baseball, boxing, volleyball, and track champions, but recent defections and other signs of discontent indicate that the national system for developing and supporting world-class players is crumbling. Economic, political, and social depression have driven Cuban superstars such as Orlando "El Duque" Hern ndez and Rey Ordo$ez to seek asylum in the United States. Here they found inflated fame and fortune, of course, and the author also takes U.S. major leagues to task for devaluing loyalty between teams and players. Colorful characters abound in chapters that are part travelog, part expos . Highly recommended for public libraries.
-Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st ed edition (April 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060196602
• ISBN-13: 978-0060196608
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #282,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Landmark in Sportswriting, May 30, 2000

By 

J. Gaines "Jainesy" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey Into the Heart of Cuban Sports (Hardcover)

I was moved to tears by S.L. Price's poignant and unique view into the Cuban life. S.L. clearly drew on his sincere personal interest in Cuban culture to gain unprecedented access to compelling figures like Teofilo Stevenson and Lazaro Valle. We all know about El Duque, but Valle's bittersweet story, recounted with giddy mirthful hilarity behiond a dilapidated garage, left a haunting impression of perhaps the world's greatest pitcher, reduced to sneaking change out of a waiter's tip. Sweet as lemon pie.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully written, heartbreaking book, March 31, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports (Paperback)

Among sports books, Pitching Around Fidel is a rare thing: it is smart, honest, and beautifully written. With a novelist's eye for the telling detail and a breezy, engaging writing style, S.L. Price takes the reader on an amazing journey to another world -- the barely functioning sports machine of Fidel Castro's Cuba, circa late 1990s. Price writes with compassion about the sports heroes who dream about making it across the Florida Straits to America, where surely fame and fortune await them. Some of the most moving and heartbreaking moments of the book come when he introduces us to the wives and sons that the Cuban sports stars have left behind.

Surely the best part of Pitching Around Fidel is Price's observation that Cuban sports are pure because it is one of the only places on earth whether one can find true amateur sports, where the only reward for a champion is a medal. But he also comes to realize that this pure ideal places a very heavy burden on the island nation's amateur sports stars, who are forever attempting to pitch and run (and even sail) around Fidel.

4.0 out of 5 stars wonderfully written and interesting, December 27, 2010

By 

bottomofthe9th (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports (Hardcover)

Scott Price is such a wonderful writer, and this book is another example of his very literary non-fiction. Very thoroughly researched book about the Cuban sports program; Price traveled to Cuba on multiple occasions to do interviews, watch games, etc. While ultimately not a glowing portrait of the Castro regime, it is nonetheless a genuine one (and one very sympathetic to ordinary Cubans), and there is no knee-jerk political tripe. The author conducts dozens of interviews, and really explores the question of why some elite Cuban athletes defect but others do not. The book also contains some very interesting anecdotes about baseball players who defect, only to ignore their Cuban wives and children after remarrying in the US.