• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 01 / 19 / 2011

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BUCK DELATORRE. TAMPA - After 56-plus years, Charlie Miranda remembers throwing two strikes – curveballs – to start the game. The catcher wanted another one, and Miranda shook him off. The catcher told him to waste the next pitch. Miranda did.

"They're still looking for it," Miranda, now a Tampa City Council member, said this week, recalling the youth baseball game his Cuscaden Park all-star team played in Havana in 1954.

Miranda was 13. Playing the infield was 9-year-old Tony La Russa, a Tampa native and now manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

More than a half-century later, travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba have eased, and direct flights from Tampa are being planned. That has led to a three-game "old-timers" rematch in June involving players from the Cuscaden Park team and their Havana counterparts.

Miranda has twice met in Havana with Cubans on that team who also want to play.

"I've met some of the guys who are going to be playing against us," Miranda said. "They look like they just came out of a King Kong movie."

One has grown to be about 6-foot-3 and weighs about 250 pounds. "He's all muscle with a belly," Miranda said.

Approvals still have to come from the U.S. and Cuban governments, but it looks like a go for the games, which will be played in Havana, Miranda said.

Members of the team still living in the Bay area are saving their money for plane tickets. Practices are taking place once a week at Jefferson High School.

"We've had three practices with no running," Miranda said. "We just want to make sure we still can bend down, pick up the ball and throw to first."

Three or four members of the team play softball, so they're still in fairly good shape, he said. The team, just to be safe, plans to bring along a doctor.

An effort to stage a 50th anniversary game failed in 2004, he said, but now with a loosening of relations between the two nations, there's a renewed interest.

In the 1950s, Ybor City's Cuscaden Park all-stars were made up mostly of youths who spoke Spanish and had a year-round love of the game. Many came from families of Cuban immigrants. Before 1954, the all-stars made a couple of trips to Havana to play, courtesy of the Ybor City Optimist Club.

In 1954, Miranda said, "We were supposed to play four games in four days and ended up having to play five games." The team only had three pitchers and had to borrow one from another Cuban team for one game.

The teams split the first four contests, and Miranda was playing the fifth game in left field when Cuscaden Park's pitcher got sick before the game and vomited on the mound. Manager Andrew Espolita yelled for Miranda to come in and pitch.

Miranda recalled Espolita handing him the ball and said, "Do the best you can."

"The fans were loud, yelling, 'Yankee, go home,' " Miranda recalled. "It was a great experience in life. We lost the game, 4-2, and I'll never forget it.

"I believe that we were the first team of that age to go play on foreign shore," Miranda said. "Of all the things I've done in my days, that is still the most memorable."

So far, about eight players from the 1954 team have committed themselves, he said. "La Russa can't go," Miranda said, "because he's managing the Cardinals."

The team has scheduled a Feb. 20 scrimmage against the fathers of the Jefferson High baseball team, who are 20-some years younger than the Cuscaden Park players.

"We're all over 65 now," Miranda said, so some younger replacements from subsequent Cuscaden Park teams have been "drafted."

The Cubans have asked the Tampa team to bring baseballs and bases, Miranda said. The Tampa group is also buying jerseys for both teams.

Gaither High baseball coach Frank Permuy recalled playing on that 1954 team. It was his third – and final – stint in Cuba with the Cuscaden Park all-stars.

"The competition was tough," Permuy recalled. "It seemed like their kids were a little older than we were. It was a great experience for us. We were kids from Ybor City, and we all were pretty poor. We got to stay with doctors and lawyers and went on trips to the country club. They bought us clothes and shoes."

The team has been practicing once a week for a month or so, Permuy said.

"We got the bug again," he said.

Tampa's Cuban heritage goes back to Ybor City's cigar-making immigrants of the late 1800s. The Tampa-Cuba baseball connection has an intense history, even before the Cuscaden Park team hit Havana.

In 1954, Fidel Castro was mounting his revolution that eventually seized control of the island nation, severing relations for decades between Cuba and the United States.

Before then, however, from 1946 to 1953, the Havana Cubans played in what became the Class B Florida International League. That minor league's pride of Tampa was the Smokers, club that hit its stride during the post-World War II boom.

The Smokers played at Plant Field – site of today's Pepin Stadium on North Boulevard. Whenever they played the Cubans, large crowds gathered. A typical attendance at a Smokers-Cubans game was 8,000, according to accounts.

Tommy Spicola III, nephew of Smokers owner Tom Spicola, said in a 2001 interview with The Tampa Tribune that, "People went berserk when the Cubans came to play the Smokers. Seats were full. This was a natural, popular, intense rivalry."

When the Smokers traveled to Havana, 30,000 fans showed up for each game.

The Smokers won the 1946 league title, but after that Havana dominated. In 1947, the Tampa team went 102-52 but finished second to the Cubans.

Buck Delatorre, a member of the 1954 Cuscaden Park team who went on to play professional baseball, is looking forward to playing in Havana.

"Definitely, we all are," he said. "There are a lot of our original guys still alive and still living in Tampa. We've all known each other and see each all the time."

After high school, Delatorre played in the Houston Colt .45s system and them semi-pro ball in Tampa before taking up with the Clearwater Bombers fast-pitch softball team. After that, he's played in various over-40 baseball leagues in the Bay area.

After 56 years, he hopes the competition in Cuba isn't as fierce as it was a half-century ago.

"I do want to change the rules a little, to make it a little less competitive," he said, "like no bunting and no stealing."

Like a kid, he's eager to play.

"We've been working on it hard," Delatorre said. "We're practicing already. We're making this trip happen. We've got a really good chance at it."

Source: www2.tbo.com/content/2011/jan/18/181325/new-travel-rules-lead-to-tampa-cuba-baseball-reuni/news-breaking/