CUBA CULTURE SECTION - Havana Journal > Sports & Cars
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By Christopher Rhoads | Wall Street Journal
Juan Ignacio Hernández Nodar flew to Havana, Cuba, in August 1996 with hopes of making the biggest score yet in the shadowy trade of helping elite Cuban baseball players defect to the U.S. major leagues.
The former truck driver, then 38 years old and an American citizen, already had helped four Cuban pitchers escape and net big-league contracts worth almost $11 million combined. One of them, Liván Hernández, would win the World Series Most Valuable Player award the following year.
But Mr. Hernández Nodar, whose family fled Cuba when he was two, was…
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Registration is now open for the second annual Montecristo Cup Pro-Am golf tournament to be held at the Varadero Golf Club from April 22nd to 24th, 2010.
This event is open to professional and amateur golfers worldwide. The updated schedule is available online at TheMontecristoCup.com and now includes a practice round on Thursday, April 22nd for all registered players. The opening reception will follow later in the evening.
Three days of Pro-Am golf in Cuba
A single entry fee of £100 offers golfers a two-person team-play competition on Friday April 23rd for the Esencia Cuba…
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By TYLER KEPNER | New York Times
The winning bidder for Aroldis Chapman, a hard-throwing Cuban pitcher, is a midmarket team with nine losing seasons in a row. The Cincinnati Reds, of all teams, took a financial risk Monday for the potential reward of an ace starting pitcher.
“This is a very significant deal for this organization,” Reds General Manager Walt Jocketty said Monday at a news conference in Cincinnati. “If you look at the size of the market that we are here in Cincinnati, we have to take some bold moves from time to…
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Cuba opened an outdoor museum which exhibits steam locomotives that have been completely restored.
Cuba was the first country in Latin America to have a railroad due to its valuable sugar industry.
The locomotives 1112, 1308, 1311 and 1138 were made by the American Baldwin Locomotive Works company in the years 1878, 1900, 1904 and 1908, respectively, and are now located in front of the Central Railway Station, in the historic center of Old Havana.
The museum was officially opened on November 19 which was the 172nd anniversary of the first railway travel from…
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By FREDERIC J. FROMMER | AP
“Pingpong diplomacy” thawed relations between the United States and China in 1971. Can “baseball diplomacy” help do the same for the U.S. and Cuba?
Americans ranging from 12-year-old ballplayers to softballing senior citizens are visiting the communist island to engage in their own kind of field work, and there’s talk of another trip by a major league team.
These bat-and-ball initiatives come as the Obama administration takes steps toward improving relations with the Cold War rival, such as loosening financial and travel restrictions on Americans with relatives on the island.
“I think it…
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By Jorge Casuso | Miami New Times
When Miami sports agent Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, 51, flew into Miami Friday after spending 13 years in a Cuban jail, he felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. The small children he had left behind were all grown up and Miami had sprouted a new skyline.
Hernandez, who tried to help Orlando “El Duque Hernandez” and other baseball stars defect from the Communist island, served “every last day” of his 15 year-sentence. (A Cuban jail-year is 10 months long.) And he believes what he did was right.
“What we did we did…
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By Bill Chastain | MLB.com
Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman arrived in New York on Wednesday seeking the opportunity to sign with a Major League team and cash in on what the market might yield for a 21-year-old left-hander with top-of-the-rotation potential, according to multiple reports.
Chapman showcased his abilities for Cuba in March during the World Baseball Classic before defecting this summer when Cuba played in a tournament in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After defecting, Chapman established residency in Andorra. Several teams had planned to see Chapman throw in Europe, but upon the advice of his agent, Edwin Mejia, he decided…
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By MIKE SECCOMBE | Vineyard Gazette
As part of the deal to get into Cuba to make his movie, producer Kris Meyer had to take part in a baseball game, an all-ages, goodwill game with a Cuban team in Cuba.
He did not play well.
“The gentleman that struck me out was 75,” he told a packed house after the screening of The Lost Son of Havana, the story of Luis Tiant, at the Chilmark Community Center on Wednesday night.
He was crushed too, in left field, when he lost sight of a catch — “It went so high” —…
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Herald Tribune
Tapping into what seems like thawing relations between the United States and Cuba, the Sarasota Yacht Club is hosting a forum Thursday to discuss steps to rebuild nautical ties between the two nations.
The club has applied with the federal government for permission to compete in a sailing regatta off Cuba’s coast — something the club last did 15 years ago, before the U.S. prohibited virtually all travel to the island nation.
At Thursday’s forum, Timothy F. Ashby, an attorney with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP in Miami and national expert on Cuban-American trade issues, is scheduled to…
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Rob Sequin | Havana Journal
On May 2nd, 2009, Palmares SA, the organization responsible for golf in Cuba, hosted the inaugural Montecristo Cup at the Varadero Golf Club in Varadero, Cuba. The competition, which was open to amateurs and professionals alike, was oversubscribed and exceeded expectations. The event was a truly international competition, with golfers representing many countries including the UK, Canada, Spain, Andorra, Korea, Vietnam, Japan as well as Cuba.
Guest of honor, Ernie Els, a three-time major championship winner and currently ranked among the top 20 golfers in…
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