Cuba Baseball Team's Visit to Miami Spurs Complicated Emotions

Protests are likely, but some cheers are also expected as the team plays a World Baseball Classic semifinal game in the city with the highest Cuban population in the U.S.



Cuba’s national baseball team has struggled in recent years but qualified for the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic by beating Australia in a quarterfinal game played in Japan on Wednesday.Credit...Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By James Wagner
March 18, 2023, 11:31 a.m. ET

MIAMI — This is the most Cuban region in the United States.
More than 1.2 million people of Cuban heritage are estimated to reside in the greater Miami area. That, though, comes with a long, complex history: The city was largely remade over the past six decades by Cuban exiles who fled the communist government on the nearby Caribbean island. The region is an epicenter of anti-Castro activism and is where, in the past, entertainers sympathetic to the Cuban government were protested or banned.

That complicated history is what adds intrigue and importance to the proceedings on Sunday when the Cuban national baseball team makes what is believed to be its first trip to Miami since the communist revolution in 1959. The once-mighty team, which has faded as its top players have left for the United States, worked its way through the group stage of the World Baseball Classic in Taiwan and shocked the international baseball world by winning a quarterfinal game in Japan. That qualified the team for the semifinals of the quadrennial tournament, where it will face the winner of a quarterfinal game between the United States and Venezuela.

The stadium hosting the championship rounds of the tournament: loanDepot Park in the Miami neighborhood known as Little Havana.
“In Miami, the symbolism is very powerful,” said Andy Gomez, a retired professor of Cuban studies at the University of Miami. “For both sides.”

The presence of the Cuban team, which is seen not only as a symbol of the country’s most popular sport but also as a propaganda tool of the government, is expected to stir conflicting emotions in the South Florida community.

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