No island hoppin' for Fidel

BBC 2 centred their Cuba Night presentation around an Arena programme which purported to examine the history of baseball on the island. In the early stages, it was suggested that in a different world, one Fidel Castro might well have been a genuine card pin-up, a US sporting hero.

Fidel, we were assured, was a dab hand with a bat in his early days, a claim which might have worked had the producers not decided to back it up with some grainy and ill-advised footage of the big man at the plate.

Now, standing there clasping the bat in his big paws, he looked OK and it wasn't all that hard to imagine him sending a curve ball skyward. It was when he attempted to swing that the notion of Babe Castro veered swiftly towards the fanciful.

Never can moments of such singular gracelessness, such utter lack of dexterity, have been captured on film before. Repeatedly, Fidel hacked vainly at the ball, a ponderous, manic looking swing which gradually evolved into an ungainly pirouette followed by a stumble. Even if they'd thrown a beach ball at him, he still wouldn't have connected. We watched this and were expected to believe that scouts were interested in Castro's potential.

It was worrying to think that someone burdened with such astonishingly poor co-ordination should have been allowed to assume power over an entire country but with the obligatory reference to Fidel dispensed with, the documentary quickly moved on to its central theme, which concerned the lives of the Hernandez brothers.

Livan Hernandez defected to the United States in 1995 to realise the commercial worth of his baseball ability with the Florida Marlins, inadvertently turning the heat on his equally gifted brother, Orlando, who told us that his potential for betrayal left him under permanent suspicion from the Cuban authorities.

And maybe with good reason: last year, Orlando skipped the island, and, aided by sports agent Joe Cubas, spent a few months in sanctuary in Peurto Rico before signing for the New York Yankees, with whom he won a World Series last year.

"Here was a guy who worked for $9 a month in Cuba and comes over here and signs a deal for $6.6 million over four years to pitch with the Yankees. What a country," exclaimed David Singleton, one of many eager to pluck the strings of the American Dream, which both brothers are seen to represent.

Even Orlando's trip over was quickly coated in myth by the US broadcast companies and some print outlets. Americans wanted to believe that Orlando and some other refugees had taken to the waters in an unusually large cigar box, with the central hero batting valiantly to fend off the kind of sea creatures last seen in Spielberg movies, and that the group kept their sanity by repeatedly singing The Star Spangled Banner - in English.

Recent reports that Hernandez had travelled in a decent sized boat and hadn't even seen a shark were not well received, but the American Dream aspect lives on.

It was backed up by footage of Orlando driving through New York in a beautiful pick-up, simultaneously talking on his cell-phone and smoking an outrageously big cigar (If Fidel ever tried a stunt like that, it could only lead to disaster).

And undoubtedly, both Livan and Orlando are living the kind of lifestyle beyond the comprehension of their grandfather back in Cuba. Their story certainly encapsulates the essence of American professional sport, underlying the fact that if you're good enough, sports agents like Joe Cubas have the power to procure working visas for you and your companions and mega bucks will follow.

All indigenous American sports are fuelled by fairytale ghetto stories which paper over the countless examples of brutal rejection and unrealised potential - almost every city street basketball court has its tale of the doomed contender - and the Hernandez brothers' ability and fortune helps perpetuate the partial truth that sport offers a sure-fire escape from poverty, a chance to brush shoulders with those in pretend land.

Yet there was more to their lives - Orlando left Cuba knowing he was effectively exiling himself from his two daughters and aware that his defection was the source of much bitterness among his former sporting colleagues in Cuban baseball.

But as musician Branford Marshals pointed out, baseball is emblematic of the American Way in that it ultimately allows for the triumph of the individual within a team environment, that it is essentially about lone achievement, an argument substantiated by the Hernandez tale.

There was a lot more the documentary might have given us - what of those Cuban players who tried in the Major Leagues and failed? What about the Cubans brought in on derisory contracts during World War 2 when the homegrown stars were drafted? Just how powerful are agents like Jose Cubas?

Still, it made for refreshing television, just another example of a place where sport regularly impacts upon lives with dizzying consequences.

Light years away from Major League baseball, Football Focus travelled to Rushden and Diamonds, the non-league side who held Leeds to a 0-0 draw in Saturday's FA Cup. Rushden did not present itself as a roaring place exactly - the opening footage showed a gentleman known as Pat the Painter, suitably indulging in a spot of painting.

"Painting going well, Pat?," asked the man from the Beeb.

"Oh, very good, very well," confirmed Pat.

Back in studio, Lawrie McMenamie was happily singing the praises of "the greatest football competition of them all."

It was just one of those mind boggling statements made on television every so often. Did he mean that the FA Cup is greater than that bash in France last summer? Wonder which medal Emmanuel Petit would rather keep?