#Shortstops: Iron Curtain jersey
Baseball is as American as apple pie. What baseball is not is Russian.
Prior to the International Olympic Committee declaring in 1986 that baseball would be included in the official list of sports, the Soviet Union banned baseball as it was seen as another weapon of American imperialism. But with that announcement, the Soviets rapidly reversed course and started to vigorously pursue baseball excellence by any means possible. While it was a long and arduous process, the expansion of the game was aided by the recent implementation of economic and social reforms undertaken by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
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Within the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s collections sits a jersey from the Tiraspol APF Giants, one of the oldest teams in the former USSR. Tiraspol is a city within the country of Moldova, a former Soviet Republic. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the team formed and found itself financed by a local agricultural company called APF; a testament to the burgeoning capitalist movement within the former communist country.
Due to the Cold War, baseball equipment was still quite rare. During a game in Leningrad, the field being used had a 30-foot drop behind the fence in left field into an artificial lake. This lake frequently swallowed the valuable baseballs. According to an American attending the game, a home run was hit into the lake, prompting the public address announcer to say in Russian: “Now we lose our third baseball today. So let us say farewell to the ball. Those of you who wish may dive into the water to collect the three balls.”
While a humorous anecdote, this shows the hardship that everyday players and teams like the Giants faced in order to better themselves and the game within Russia and the other countries behind the Iron Curtain.
The Giants were the first and only team to win the USSR Baseball Championship, according to a local Moldovan newspaper. The players had very little baseball experience, but one of the pitchers was a former star javelin thrower.
In order to improve their skills, the team traveled to the United States in 1991 to face collegiate teams and learn from them about how to better play the game. Journeying from Florida to Indiana and Illinois, they faced collegiate teams, allowing them to learn how to better play the game. This trip seemed successful as it helped the Tiraspol Giants go on to place second overall in the Russian Baseball League in 1992 and finish as runner-up in a hotly contested best-of-five championship series that same year.
Alex Buchheit was the 2023 curatorial intern in the Frank and Peggy Steele Internship Program for Leadership Development
