THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Notes : Peaceful Closing to Games

There were fireworks inside the Hoosier Dame Sunday night at the Pan American Games Closing Ceremony Celebracion, an event fraught with controversy from the start.

Originally scheduled to be held outdoors at American Legion Mall, the site was changed when the Legion objected to the inclusion of the Communist Cubans.

Then there was the flap over using musicians who were Cuban refugees and threats of a boycott.

But the Miami Sound Machine did play at the Celebracion . Gloria Estefan did sing. The Cuban delegation did attend the event, along with the other delegations and a crowd of about 40,000.

And a good time was had by all--except for Manuel Gonzales Guerra, head of the Cuban delegation, who apparently had the stomach ache he threatened to have if the Miami Sound Machine played.

Even Jose Ramon Fernandez, Cuba’s secretary of education and sport, the man who will be in charge of the next Pan Am Games at Havana in 1991, took part in the ceremony without incident.

The American flag was lowered and the Cuban flag raised in the traditional rite of passing the event from one host country to the next.

There was concern that the ceremony might be disrupted by a Miami-based anti-Castro group, but there were no disturbances in or around the Hoosier Dome, possibly because of the presence of hundreds of police officers and security personnel.

Although most of the athletes were dancing and mingling in the aisles as the formal ceremony ended and the Miami Sound Machine took over, members of the Cuban delegation remained in their seats, showing neither disapproval nor enthusiasm for the group that includes Cuban refugees who live in Miami.

The men’s volleyball final was delayed 15 minutes Sunday when the officials refused to take the court because of a pay dispute, U.S. Coach Marv Dunphy said.

Dunphy said the officials had not been paid because of an accounting problem and would not start the match until they received their money.

“They heard the officials in the other sports had already been paid, and they wanted to be paid, too,” Dunphy said. “It worked.”

Bill Wall, executive director of the American Basketball Assn. of the USA said the United States will consider not sending a men’s basketball team to Havana for the 1991 Pan American Games because Cuba did not send a men’s basketball team to the Games at Indianapolis.

“Cuba lost by 38 points at the World University Games (this summer in Zagreb, Yugoslavia) and knew they would lose by 40 here,” Wall said. “They pulled out because they didn’t want to be embarrassed.

“So, we won’t send our men to Havana. There’s nothing to do there, anyway.”

Wall said that in the future he would rather have the association give priority to he World University Games over the Pan American Games.

“We sent our best men’s and women’s teams to the Pan American Games and had our next-best teams in Zagreb,” he said. “That cost us two gold medals in Zagreb. We also would have had much better competition playing against the Europeans there than we have had in most of the games here.”

Wall made his comments before Brazil upset the United States men, 120-115, in Sunday’s gold medal game.

Times staff writers Curt Holbreich and Randy Harvey contributed to this story.