← Back to the front page

Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

6. Communists Kept Tipping Their Hand by Failing to Conceal Cultural Clues

Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos. Wikimedia

When baseball was introduced to Cuba in the 1870s, the locals were hooked, and took to the yanqui sport with a passion. Cuba’s love of baseball thus began decades before America seized the island during the Spanish-American War. Indeed, despite its American origin, “beisbol” became associated with Cuban nationalism in the nineteenth century, displacing sports associated with Cuba’s colonial master, Spain.

That strong association with baseball played a significant role in kicking off the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon. Indeed, as seen below, the Soviets’ and Cubans’ failure to conceal clues provided by baseball tipped their hand time after time during the Cold War. Cuba’s association with baseball not only impacted the 1962 crisis, but had an impact on numerous other instances in subsequent decades, that threatened to turn the Cold War hot.

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.