El cuban baseball as a sport it has its origin in the game of Batos that the Cuban aborigines used to play, especially the Taínos. The Spanish chroniclers who traveled to the island in the conquest of different expeditions and colonization have provided evidence of this activity.
That game was played in the batey and it was a primitive way of playing ball to hit it that was made of resin and leaves in the shape of a piece of a branch of a tree cut in the shape of a shovel.
Among other related facts, according to linguists, there is a relationship in the origin of the words bate (bat) and batear (hit) with the corresponding words batey and batos used by the Taínos.
There is no information on the history of baseball until 1845 when Alexander J. Cartwright founded the team. knickerbockers, the team that went to New York and the world for the first time and from that moment on in the practice of this new sport began to spread throughout the lands of the Caribbean.
It is said that the US Marines were its main promoters and Cuba was the first country to welcome this activity. It is said that in 1871, several wealthy families sent their children to study in schools and universities in the United States. Nemesio Guillo (founder of Cuban ball) and José Dolores Amieva and his two brothers were part of this wave that introduced the technique and helped promote the sport they had known in the United States.
They created a team in Matanzas and started playing on vacant lots. The historic Palmar del Junco stadium in Pueblo Nuevo was built earlier and it was considered the first of its kind on the island, where the first official Cuban baseball game took place in 1874.
Until in 1877 the first international match with an American team was held, in Palmar de Junco, this team arrived in Matanzas aboard an American training ship. A year later, in 1878, the passion for baseball arose among the Cuban people. The Cuban Professional Baseball League was created.
Stadiums were built everywhere in Havana, where dozens of fans went to watch baseball games in places like Canteras de Medina, Melitón, Hacendados, Placer de Peñalver and Quinta de Torrecillas in Puentes Grandes.
Professional baseball was practiced in Cuba until 1961.
The thesis of the origin of baseball in Cuba and the Antilles according to the aboriginal tradition of the Batos game is ABSOLUTELY unsustainable from the historical, archaeological and anthropological point of view. Batos is a two-sided game, where the ball is passed from one side to the other, therefore it is similar to other games in Central America. It is more like volleyball or tennis, it has nothing to do with the American sport called baseball. The theses of this supposed and incoherent aboriginal origin have their genesis in nationalism, as a response to the imperialist penetration in the area, but the political objectives are not on the scientific evidence.