Yesterday, Barack Obama, Raúl Castro, and the rest of Havana’s Estadio Latinoamericano bore witness to the first visit by an MLB team to Cuba since 1999: a 4-1 win for the Tampa Bay Rays over the Cuban National Team.
James Loney homered and drove in three runs, and Matt Moore and the Rays’ staff shut out the home side until Rudy Reyes’ ninth-inning homer, but this was much more than a mere exhibition match (for superb pieces on the role of baseball in U.S.-Cuba relations check this article in The Atlantic and this Sporting News piece). This was what many hope to be the jumping-off point for MLB’s new long-term role in Cuban baseball development. What this role will look like and how effective it will be at creating safer passages for Cuban player abroad remain to be seen, but we are hopeful.
In the meantime, here are some highlights from a historic day of baseball diplomacy, and watch the full stream here: