Fidel Castro and Baseball

Throughout his life, Fidel Castro wore a variety of hats, including activist, revolutionary, political radical, guerrilla leader, and brutal tyrant. And according to a persistent tale, he nearly put on the hat of a New York Yankee. It cannot be denied that Fidel Castro loved baseball a much. Having played the sport during his undergraduate years in Havana, he was also reasonably good at it.

Yet there is a huge difference between being "decent" and becoming a Yankee. Castro was never good enough to enter the professional ranks, but a common legend holds that he was once a prospect for the Yankees in the 1950s, periodically switching to the Washington Senators.

This myth may have had a kernel of truth, like many good myths, which helped it develop. Castro might have participated in a large-scale audition organized in Cuba by Joe Cambria, a renowned baseball scout who was in charge of bringing a large number of Cuban players to America, but this is not a certainty. Castro would never have been given much thought even if this had occurred, but he enjoyed the tale and never attempted to put it down.