Some teams celebrate championships with champagne in the locker room and nights on the town.
After winning the Baseball World Cup on Sunday night, the Cuban national team had a different plan -- one perhaps unique to their circumstances.
They returned to their hotel, sold their game jerseys to fans and used the money to go shopping.
"We're the only team in the world that has to sell all our stuff to make any money," said one player.
Though baseball is Cuba's national game, baseball salaries in the country's domestic league are pathetic in comparison with the exorbitant sums paid to major leaguers in the US.
Most players in the Cuban Baseball Federation make under US$20 per month. Those on Sunday's championship team were given only US$250 as spending money for a tour that included two weeks in Taiwan for the world cup and several earlier exhibition games in Japan.
So, in order to buy shoes for their girlfriends and gifts for their families, team members found their own ways to make money, mostly by selling game uniforms and boxes of Cuban cigars brought from home.
Sunday night after the team's victory, players were thronged in the lobby and hallways of Taipei's Grand Hotel by local fans intent on buying jerseys, hats, autographed balls and other paraphernalia.
Some players sold their shirts right off their backs in hotel corridors. Others walked back to their rooms in borrowed pants after selling all their clothes. Some jerseys sold for as much as US$300 each.
But the on-field memorabilia was only available after the championship, when the team was for all intents and purposes finished using it.
Earlier on the tour, cigars were the Cubans' main tool for barter and revenue.
Players sold boxes of 25 Cohibas Esplendidos, a premium cigar made famous by Fidel Castro, to anyone they could find for around US$125 each.
In Taipei, such cigars sell individually for more than NT$700. One Australian player said he traded his cleats for a box of the world renowned smokes.
With the money raised from cigar and uniform sales, players headed down the stairs from the Grand Hotel and to the nearby Shihlin Night Market and its surrounding commercial district, where they picked up automobile parts, home furnishings, electrical appliances and various other gifts.
Cuba -- still a communist state -- has a controlled economy that is tightly limited in its trade with the outside world.
One player was looking for a clutch for a 1994 Daewoo, a part he could not find in Cuba.
By yesterday afternoon as the team was preparing to return home, however, the shopping sprees had accumulated into a lot of luggage.
One player had six large suitcases stuffed to capacity, a rolled carpet, an oversized shopping bag brimming with four large Pink Panther dolls, two sets of ceiling fans and light fixture units, a VCR and a bag full of oranges.
Though getting all that booty on the homebound flight may have presented some problems, players said they expected getting through customs back in Cuba would not.
"Since they won the championship, Fidel will be at the airport to greet them, so customs won't give them too hard a time," said one source familiar with the team. "It shouldn't be a problem."
RSS