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A Sports Dispute Started the Cuban Missile Crisis and Other Odd Facts

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

U2 photo of Cayo Alcatraz, with the tell-tale signs of its intended use as a Soviet base. CIA

37. The Missing Baseball Diamonds

Evidence that Cayo Alcatraz was being developed as a Soviet base consisted not only of what spy plane photos showed but also of what they did not show. Facilities included a soccer field, plus tennis, volleyball, and basketball courts – all sports that Cubans did not commonly play, but that Soviets did. Most telling was that the facilities did not include the one sport that Cubans were crazy for: there were no baseball diamonds.

The CIA concurred, and in a congressional briefing, then CIA Director Richard Helms told the legislators: “clinching the case that all this was for Soviet — not Cuban — use, there are sports facilities for soccer, tennis and volleyball only, and we have yet to see a major Cuban military installation that does not provide for ‘beisbol’“. Under US pressure, the Soviets backed down, the crisis fizzled, and the Cubans left the Cayo Alcatraz naval base unfinished.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.