Cuban Cultural Center to host congress on Cuban baseball history

The Cuban Cultural Center of New York's annual congress this year will be on the history of Cuban baseball, and I will have the honor of moderating one of the panel discussions.

The congress will be held Aug. 20 at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University, which counts as an alumnus Cuban Baseball Hall of Famer and pioneer Esteban Bellan, the first Cuban-born player to play for a major league when he was a member of the Troy Haymakers of the National Association in 1871.

The congress will feature keynote speaker Roberto González Echevarría, Ph.D. at Yale University and author of Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball.

One panel will be a roundtable of Cuban All-Stars, whose invitees include Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso (left), Luis Tiant, Tony Perez and Bert Campaneris.

The panel I will moderate will include Manuel Márquez-Sterling, Professor Emeritus at Plymouth State University and author of the Cuba 1952-1959 blog; El Nuevo Herald journalist Marino Martínez; Leslie Heaphy, Ph.D. at Kent State University and author of A League of Their Own: Cuban Women in Baseball; and Gary Ashwill, baseball historian and author of the blog Agate Type: Adventures in Baseball Archeology.

I hope to blog and perhaps post video from the congress.