Rolling to Cuba for the first time, The Rolling Stones have announced on their website that they have extended their Latin American tour and will be performing a free concert in Havana this March.
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President Barack Obama is set to attend a historic baseball game this month in Havana between the Tampa Bay Ray and the Cuban national team.
The game will be the first in Cuba involving a major league team since a visit by the Baltimore Orioles in 1999. Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said in the release that his team was “privileged” to visit the country on what would be a “memorable and significant” trip, a sentiment echoed by league commissioner Rob Manfred. “Our franchise will be privileged to visit Cuba, to share the field with its National Team and to embody the goodwill of our game”.
Obama has championed engagement with Cuba, and diplomatic relations between the Cold War foes were restored in July of a year ago. The game will also be streamed via WatchESPN. But the players association and Major League Baseball worked hard to minimize the disruptions.
But Western musicians have increasingly flocked to Cuba in recent years, especially since 2014 when Obama and leader Raul Castro, the ailing Fidel’s brother, launched the reconciliation push. US government contractors also tried to use the concert to promote programs created to foment political change in Cuba.
Cuba has produced some 200 major leaguers over the decades, including former Cincinnati Reds slugger and Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Perez, three-time batting champion Tony Oliva, and celebrated pitcher Luis Tiant.
The long-planned game was announced Tuesday by Major League Baseball.
The Stones event will be in a country where the communist government once banned the group’s music as an “ideological deviation”.
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If all this goes well, the next step from a baseball standpoint, should be to make it easier for Cuban-born players to enter MLB.
