Beisbol, the Daddy, and Bolivar

It started when Daddy Yankee threw out the first ball for the WBC game between Puerto Rico and Venezuela at San Juan's Hiram Bithorn stadium. All through the game, all through the night, rattling out of every passing car, motorcycle, and cell phone, came the unending chorus of "Rompe," which has been number one on the Latin Billboard charts since its release last December. It's got this nursery-rhyme quality to it, but once it grabs you it can't be excised from your head. When I saw the video for the song, whose title means "Break" in the sense of "Smash," playing in the window of the Sears at Plaza Las Americas, I realized that this island was crazy with baseball and reggaeton fever. Here was a bikini-clad mami with a baseball bat swinging away at a TV set, rompiendo the screen to bits. Was it punk or hiphop or both, I'm not sure. (There was this old punk song I remember that went "Smash your TV/Your TV won't smash you back") All I know is that the applause for Yankee's appearance on the Bithorn mound far exceeded that for any one on the team (yes, even Pudge Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado), pop divo Chayanne (who threw out the first ball against Cuba) and salsa hero Andy Montanez (who incited a seventh-inning rally that ultimately fell short against the Cubans). Maybe that's why Montanez's single "Se Le Ve," from the upcoming joint "Salsa Con Reggaeton" is a duet with none other than Daddy Yankee. "Se Le Ve" unites the adolescent horndog with the middle-aged gentleman salsero, singing the praises of a typically fine island lady. But even though the reggaeton beat occasionally underscores the proceedings, Yankee does most of his rapping over one of those standard Puerto Rican salsa adaptations of Afro-Cuban piano "tumbaos."
Puerto Rico's painful loss to Cuba may have been mitigated by the fact that Montanez is a national hero for standing up to Miami Cubans who criticized his appearance in Communist Havana in the '90s. I guess you could say the same thing about the earlier, equally painful loss to Venezuela. The front page of Claridad that socialist paper they sell in Pueblo supermarket, was still reflecting on the FBI pepper spray incident of several weeks before (here's a new angle where you can really see the stream of spray) but there was also a mention of Venezuela (new tourist destination of the not-so-loony left, according to Juan "Chavez has been deposed" Forrero) shouting out solidarity with the plight of PR's colonial status. It's an interesting challenge to those nationalist tendencies, eh?
I must say the Cuban team was pretty amusing with its endless series of meetings on the mound and its gang-arguing strategy with the umpires whenever there was a controversial call. I guess that's true democracy in action.