Cuba The Fifty-first State?

Capitalism as an economic system has been dead in Cuba for more than 60 years but not baseball. Cubans are passionate baseball fans. They gather in parks in Havana and talk baseball intensely. They fill baseball stadiums and watch and cheer excitedly. Capitalism has been alive in Cuba for more than 60 years in the minds and hearts of Cubans because baseball  is a capitalistic game. When a batter gets a life as a base runner, he is like a man seeking economic success. He finds himself alone in hostile circumstances surrounded by enemy individuals seeking to block his advancement. He has gained something by reaching one of the three bases but it is not a lasting success and as long as he remains on base, he is threatened by the failure of an out. To succeed he must go beyond the danger of failure by scoring a run. No one in a capitalistic economy wants to remain a prisoner of the hard fight to survive in the day-to-day economic struggle. The base runner, like a capitalistic entrepreneur, waits keeping a sharp eye on the actions going on around him for an imbalance to develop. The following batters or base runners sometimes cause either a favorable or unfavorable imbalance. The base runner must be ready to use a sudden change in the conditions around him to his advantage. He must profit from a sudden imbalance by advancing along the bases. Nothing is sure. He can fail. Everything is a chance, a gamble. He must be constantly alert for something to happen, always ready to invest himself in an enterprise if what happens seems favorable to the enterprise. More fail than succeed. The economy of the three bases is hard but unlike the communist economy outside the Cuban ballpark, it must not be manipulated for some good enterprise common to all men so that it can remain natural and hostile and allow only the fittest and the luckiest to succeed. The world outside the ballpark owes a Cuban a living but in the ballgame the world does not owe the base runner a living. He must pay his own way or be eliminated. The roars from a ball park in Cuba or anywhere else are loud with elemental meaning because the celebration of survival and success in a baseball game is the voice of a joy that has suddenly conquered a deep pain rooted in capitalism. The three great creations of the American people are the Constitution, the Federal Reserve banking system, and baseball. Cubans already have the third. Let’s hope that they join their state one day to the union of American states and gain also the other two.

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