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Cuba vs. Baltimore
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(Castro did it to us...and I don't mean Fidel)
By Peter Weller
A flag-waving zealot jumps over a guard railing and runs onto a field. Uniformed men with guns walk slowly toward him, cutting off his route of escape. They corner and cuff him, at which point a fat boy jumps the same barrier and waddles onto the field waving a protest placard. A third tries his luck, only to be blocked by an onlooker; the two tumble over the guard rail, prompting men in trench coats to cuff both of them, and off they go. Moments later a fourth rabble-rouser bolts, only to be thrown to the ground in a body slam by yet another official, who loses his hat to the perpetrator when he's yanked off the field by the authorities.
WHERE ARE WE? Watts 1965? Chicago '68? East Timor? Kosovo? No. We're in Baltimore, on May 3, 1999, at the former slaughterhouse site called Camden Yards, now the home of the Baltimore Orioles, watching the Orioles play a team of Cuban all-stars. And all these nuts running onto the field, sporting T-shirts declaring "CUBA SI, CASTRO NO" and placards demanding a "NEW MANAGER FOR CUBA" were the stars of the sideshow to a main event with no shortage of political baggage. The Cuban baseball team almost didn't make the trip altogether--last-minute visa problems delayed the players' arrival--but when they finally came, they came to win.
And win they did--resoundingly, 12-6. It was looking like an even greater stomping until the bottom of the ninth inning when, with the score 12-3, Orioles second baseman Delino DeShields hit a three-run homer to salvage a modicum of the Orioles' dignity. Not bad for a group of islanders making three bills a month, tops, contesting a monolithic corporation drowning in $84 million salaried bucks a year.
That afternoon, I'd been on a bus heading uptown from the Manhattan apartment of my girlfriend, Jean, to the Grand Havana Room to smoke a Fuente Fuente OpusX "A" when I got a call from my friend George Brightman of Cigar Aficionado magazine. "Get off the friggin' bus at 34th Street, meet me at Penn Station," he railed into the phone. "Gordon [Mott, managing editor of Cigar Aficionado] isn't going to the Cuba-Orioles game. You are."
I've had the occasion of traveling halfway around the world with this guy, and when Marshall Brightman has a plan for his posse, he barks his requests like they're the field orders of Wyatt Earp before the showdown at the OK Corral.
So off we went to B-More, the only city east of the Mississippi with as many beer guts, Bermuda shorts and baseball caps as Dallas (and having been raised in Texas, I am a witness). But some cities are kind, and B-More has always been kind to me. I've directed two episodes of NBC's "Homicide" there, and I've found the people genuine and friendly.
We're met at the train station by Gerry Edelman, a friend and national sales manager for La Flor Dominicana cigars, who transports us to Steve De Castro's great steak house, Ruth's Chris, in the heart of B-More, the very first restaurant in which I'd eaten in the town, some four years earlier. The top floor sports a private club called the Havana Club, replete with a beautiful bar, dance floor, pool table, comfortable chairs and many televisions for sports viewing.
We're joined by another good friend and discriminating cigar collector, Jay Susman, and his brother, Jonathan, who I wager could quote the box scores of every single game of Joe DiMaggio's career. He also knows the city location of every homer of Mark McGwire's record-breaking year--and proved it in a harangue with the New York Mets photographer who happened to be sitting in front of us during the game.
The sixth in our group is Nick Weeks, an articulate and semiretired cigar salesman and old friend to all present. We take the short walk from Ruth's Chris to Camden Yards, where, outside the main gate, a gaggle of cops hover nearby a consortium of pro-embargo Cuban-Americans, led by Representative Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), protesting the game.
Next: Rain, then a hitting clinic
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