Marianao has seven wins and two losses, and the stocky Gerson aside, its best players are rawboned, all arms and legs and stylish intensity.

The team’s pitcher hummed a mean high fastball. His mother told me, with an insistent slap of my palms, that he was already being scouted.

Excuse me, she said. Her son had taken the mound. She picked up her cowbell.

In between innings and at-bats, you could hear the straitened story of modern Cuba. Parents talked of what they were trained for and what they did. No line connected one to the other. So Juan Carlos trained as an engineer but has driven a taxi for eight years. Ernando trained as a skilled metalworker, but labors in a kitchen.

I asked Juan Carlos if he still dreamed of working as an engineer. He shook his head.

“I am 44,” he said. “It is too late. But my son. ...”

Rojas, the coach, chatted with one of his players, pantomiming how not to let the bat get out in front of the body. Then he turned to me and said he had family living in Queens, in a place called Elmhurst.

Are you a Mets fan, I asked hopefully, seeking a compatriot.

He shook his head. “Yankees!”

Gerson ran to third; he failed to slide and was almost tagged out. “He needs to slide,” his mother said. “You agree?”