Cuba has a Bob Feller Too

I don’t know that much about Cuban baseball, but given the decline Cuba’s economy and quality of life since the collapse of the Soviet Union — not to mention the defections — it would certainly not surprise me if the quality and vibrancy of the game had declined as well. Strong social forces are at play! Perhaps an allegory for life in Cuba can be found in the example of Cuban baseball! Quick! Someone! Give me a big fat social treatise on the subject:

Ernesto Morilla, a wiry 86-year-old who played professional baseball in the early 1950s, knows what ails Cuba’s national pastime.

“Many players have become lazy,” said Morilla, who has spent half his life as an usher in the capital’s Latinoamericano Stadium. “I remember I wouldn’t eat for days after a tough loss. These guys go drinking and dancing.”

Old men complaining about young men not taking the game seriously? Hmm, maybe things in Cuba are exactly the same as they are everywhere else.