By Ron Wertheimer. The New York Times. June 26, 2000
Baseball may still have a place in America's heart, but the game is engraved on Cuba's soul. Or so you are told in tonight's earnest PBS documentary "Greener Grass: Cuba, Baseball and the United States."
As Cuba was trying to free itself from Spanish rule in the second half of the 19th century, "baseball seemed to represent American values," the narrator says. It was modern and democratic compared with Spain's national pastime, bullfighting, which was "ceremonial and brutal."
You may never have thought much about the differences between baseball and bullfighting. And you won't ponder them too long tonight, as a succession of facts and observations are popped at you like balls off a fungo bat. The film bounces back and forth among impressions of today's ballplayers in
Cuba; glimpses of the two games last year between a Cuban team and the Baltimore Orioles; snatches of history, represented by grainy newsreels and vintage baseball cards; and talking heads, often talking in Spanish (with English subtitles). These include several Cubans who defected for freedom,
which cannot be measured, and for major league salaries, which can be.
Much of this is interesting. You'll learn, for instance, that while Fidel Castro was a pitcher, the oft-repeated claim that he was a major league prospect is apocryphal. And you'll learn that when Mr. Castro led a successful revolution in 1959, a minor league team called the Havana Sugar Kings
was slated for elevation to the majors, which would have made it the first such team outside the United States. (When Mr. Castro banned professional sports, the Sugar Kings moved to Jersey City.)
The film, written by Aaron Woolf and Christopher White and directed by Mr. Woolf, notes that Cubans have played professional baseball in the United States since the 1870's. And it bows briefly in the direction of one of the highest-profile Cubans among current major leaguers, Orlando Hernández,
El Duque, who escaped his homeland to pitch for, of all teams, the Yankees.
Wearing its heart on its sleeve like a team insignia, the film finds nobility in the hardscrabble life of today's Cubans. "To me the greatest baseball experience in the world is going to Cuba," says the American baseball historian Peter Bjarkman, "because you can go to a place
where the grass is greener. You can go to a place where players play for the love of the game."
But there is more than a hint of condescension in the portrayal of Cubans as a happy, simple people, contrasted with the somber, tired faces of the retired Cuban-born major leaguers marooned in Florida. "As a Cuban in baseball I carry a great pain in my life," says Jackie Hernández,
who played for the Pirates. "But hopefully I'll be able to go back there someday, if God is willing."
From the saga of Elián González to the Buena Vista Social Club, Americans are focusing more and more on Cuba. This film may be no more than a footnote to the national discussion, but footnotes can be worthwhile.
GREENER GRASS
Cuba, Baseball and the United States
PBS, tonight June 26
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