Rozel Lee. Jun 16, 2001.
The Tampa Tribune
Sugar-white beaches, swaying palm trees and a tropical climate greeted the
boys and their chaperons. Never mind, it was December.
It was Havana.
Cuba in the pre- Castro 1950s was the tourist mecca and baseball hub of the
Caribbean. It would be the site of a week of baseball for a not-so ragtag group
of "all- stars,'' ages 10-12.
On this first trip, how could they know they would be among the last
American goodwill ambassadors to the island?
Andrew Espolita, the local baseball genius of the day, assembled these "very
good players'' to participate in an exchange program with Cuban baseball
players, who would visit and play in Tampa in the summers.
Espolita, 92, organized youth baseball games at Cuscaden Park in Ybor City,
where he was recreation director. The former player and Nicaraguan National Team
manager coached a dozen teams at a time before the days of Little League.
This is where the boys from Central Tampa learned organized baseball, eight
to 10 hours a day, as it had been learned by Espolita, who was like a second
father to the boys when they were at the ball park, said Charlie Miranda.
Buck DeLaTorre shows off the black- and-white photos pressed between plastic
pages of a scrapbook. The smiling boys in his company included, among others, a
future high school baseball coach named Frank Permuy, future City Council member
Miranda and a future big-league player and manager named Tony LaRussa. At 9, he
was the youngest, but best shortstop, of the group.
The boys' parents entrusted them to Espolita and the male chaperons from the
Ybor City Optimists Club who arranged the exchange program.
AS FOR WINS and losses, memories get a little foggy. That first year, they
were 3-3, although Miranda recalls with certainty the Cubans were older, more
accomplished players, some of whom "even shaved'' he said.
The first trip in 1954 was the first airplane flight any of the boys had
taken. DeLaTorre can still hear the whir of the propellers.
This still was a Cuba of wealth and excess, where the boys were treated "like
royalty.'' There were palace tours, banquets arranged in their honor and
visits to country clubs with swimming pools and jai alai courts.
Miranda stayed with the president of the Havana Optimists in a hilltop villa
with marble floors, a lavishness he was unaccustomed to in Ybor City.
In this competitive baseball environment, even when it involved youngsters,
the stadium was packed. They felt like big- leaguers.
By 1956, soldiers with ammunition belts strapped across their chests lined
the streets and there was fighting in the mountains. The team was detained
several days because National Airlines wouldn't fly into Cuba. Finally they were
out and it was ended.
The boys knew nothing of political strife, rebel forces or coups. What did
any of that have to do with playing baseball?
Some of the boys wrote letters to their Cuban buddies; soon that ended, too.
No one recalls that any of the Cuban players made it to the states as a
big-league ball player, though Espolita recalls that one of them became a Tampa
banker.
On occasion, they get together. Baseball circles don't grow old, only
bigger.
THE SALADINO BASEBALL Tournament is the best time for reunions made possible
at the annual Old Timers' Day.
There, Espolita will carry a worn manila envelope and carefully extract
faded photographs from days when baseball was played with no other thought in
mind than hitting the next pitch or fielding the next hit. DeLaTorre is there,
too, with scrapbooks in hand.
They'll trade the same stories they have for 20 years. About that first
plane trip, about skinny, little Tony LaRussa, the lanky first baseman Permuy,
the hot bat of John Palmieri, Paul Ferlita letting nothing past third base, Red
Alonso shoring up the middle and Billy Vargas or DeLaTorre behind the plate.
For a few hours, they still are 12-year-old boys whose nemesis was the
sunset.
Not-so-old-timers like Permuy say he owes all his baseball knowledge to
Espolita, and to the experiences he had playing against boys who shared a
similar love of the game, whether they came from Ybor City or Havana, Cuba.
© 2001, Media General Inc. All rights reserved | 
