This week, we will cover baseball’s history in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the US. I read an article about Cuba and how baseball started and developed in that country over the years. The article I read was The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball, which talks about how a lot of what we believe about baseball in Cuba is a mixture between myth and reality. The source goes through the beginning of baseball in Cuba and shows its progress from an amateur sport to a professional sport. To help you better understand what the article is about, I will include a quote that I think best sums up the reading.
The quote that I believe best sums up the source is, “Nineteenth-century Cuban baseball is a fabulous beginning, more myth than history. But when it comes to national identities, myths are often more important than history itself.” This quote, I believe, shows what this whole source is trying to show, which is that to truly understand where Cuban national identities come from you have to look at the myths. For people in Cuba, baseball has become a piece of them and their nationality, and for many, they believe certain myths surrounding the sport to create a sense of pride and connection. One myth that they have is that baseball originated in Cuba, which is not true since Americans played the sport first. This myth originated from the fact that for forty years, there was an anti-American revolution in Cuba, and baseball had become so ingrained in who they are and their culture. This myth helps show that the myths created are connected to the Cuban people’s identity. In the begin of the article he talks about how Cuban people tried to erase American influence on the sport, to them they did not want American input on something that was so connected to who they were as a nation. They wanted baseball to be something that originated in their own country. To truly understand Cuban national identity, you have to look at the myths more deeply and gain more insight on what is happening in the country at that time because when you do, you can see why the myths were created. This whole source gives detailed information about the history of baseball in Cuba, and I believe that looking through this information helps see the myths and the importance of baseball to the Cuban people. These myths bring them together and unite them together even when they have never met each other. If they told the truth about Americans being the first to play the sport, that national identity would be lost.
