On July 24, 1959, months after coming to power, Fidel Castro took the mound at a baseball stadium in Havana to pitch an exhibition for a team of fellow revolutionaries known as Los Barbudos, the Bearded Ones.
He pitched an inning or two against a team from the Cuban military police and, by some accounts, struck out two batters.
“He threw a few pitches, people were swinging wildly and letting themselves be struck out by the Leader,” said Roberto González Echevarría, a native of Cuba who is a literature professor at Yale and the author of “The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball.