Softball with Cuba

It wasn’t your typical field of dreams: players had to avoid omnipresent land-crab holes. But that didn’t matter to Robert Bridges, professor of biomedical sciences at the Cummings School and the pitcher for his Eastern Massachusetts Senior Softball League team. He was thrilled just to be there with the fine athletes from the Federación Cubana de Softbol. Over the past three years, EMass senior teams have journeyed to Havana four times. Decades of political tensions “dissolve on the playing field,” Bridges says. Cuba’s three-time Olympic heavyweight boxing gold medalist, Teófilo Stevenson, was on hand for the series’ opening ceremonies. That’s him in the middle, flanked by Bridges (left) and second baseman Norm Shacat.