Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [66]
Cy had visited Cuba many times and knew the country well. “Just show up with your uniform,” he advised me, “Bring a bat, glove, spikes, and as many balls as you can carry. They don’t have much equipment down there. Bring a lot of dollar bills, too. You will need them for tips. And be sure to stash a twenty-dollar bill somewhere. That’s how much it will cost to process your exit visa. You can’t get off the island without it.”
Hmm, that sounded ominous. You had to pay customs officials $15 to enter Cuba, but they charged you $5 more to leave? Made me wonder what would happen if you could not produce that sawbuck. Cuban officials probably packed you off to shovel chicken shit in some commune. That did not appeal to me. I preach socialism fluently until the time comes when I actually have to participate in it. Still, the idea of competing against some of Cuba’s legendary baseball stars—said to be the best over-fifty players in the world—provided an irresistible lure. I stapled the $20 to the last page of my passport.
Of course, getting out of Cuba would probably not prove as difficult as getting in. As we write this, it is still illegal to travel to the island from the U.S. without State Department approval, something the agency rarely grants. I had already agreed to join members of the 1975 Boston Red Sox for an autograph signing at the Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut on the night before the Cuban series opened. I planned to drive from there up to Dorval Airport in Montreal to catch a direct flight to Havana.
The event ended early enough for me to make my plane with time to spare, except it took the organizers forever to cut our checks and autograph hounds kept besieging us to sign “just one more.” When we finally exited Foxwoods, a vicious winter storm percolated outside with swirling winds so powerful, big-wheel trucks rocked on their suspensions in the parking lot. I jumped in my Nissan Pathfinder and opened my travel kit to make sure I had everything before pulling out. Toothbrush, yes . . . comb, yes . . . shaver, yes . . . nail file, yes . . . roach clip, yes . . . passport . . . now how could that have happened?
The reason friends and neighbors in Craftsbury, Vermont, call me Half Cocked is that I always forget something. But for this trip, I had taken the precaution of putting my passport in plain sight on a table near the front door of my home. There is no way I could walk out of the place without noticing it. Unless I left through the kitchen.
All right, I figured, Craftsbury was on my way. Sort of. Veering off the route to retrieve the passport would add only forty-five minutes to my seven-hour trip. Plus I had no choice—there was no leaving without it. So I drove the Pathfinder quickly on roads that already glistened under black ice. Bridgestone had constructed my tires to laugh at treacherous conditions, but they fumbled to get a grip on this frozen highway. A wall of glass would offer more friction.
Riding through the blizzard, I reminded myself not to get cocky. When you can no longer hear your tires racing over the road, you must tread lightly. Stay alert. Keep your car’s weight centered. No sudden movements. Do not brake abruptly and, once you are up to cruising speed, do not accelerate. I maintained sixty-five miles per hour, just fast enough to stay ahead of the storm.
The snow fell so thickly it looked like polar bears dropping from the sky. I could see no more than six feet in front of me as the four-wheel-drive