I’ve been interested in Cuban sports ever since I read S.L. Price’s “Pitching Around Fidel” a few years back. I got further into the country’s history when I got to write a bit about Livan Hernandez, one of the island’s most famous defectors.
But until I read today’s story in The Washington Post about a Cuban soccer player defecting, I never knew this about Cuban teams that play outside of the country:
After Thursday’s training session in Washington, the team returned to the hotel and the players reported to their rooms. The telephones had been removed by Cuban officials, a standard practice to discourage players from communicating with outsiders on foreign trips.
How must it feel to travel to the modern world and be insulated by your government from the 21st century? I can’t even imagine.