Orioles Playing in Cuba Could Be a Good Thing

As if Cuba hasn’t got enough problems, with poverty, hurricanes and a dictator, now the destitute island might get a visit from Albert Belle during spring training. No international incidents, please.

The thought of the new Oriole free agent being introduced to Fidel Castro is just delicious. Albert, Fidel. Fidel, Albert. What a cage-match stare down!

All sorts of Havana-moonlight foolishness was buzzing through baseball last week as word spread that Baltimore might play a pair of home-and-home exhibition games against Cuba this spring.

In the tradition of ping-pong diplomacy with China, the idea of a game between the Cuba’s legendary national team and a major league club has been a dream for decades. As long ago as the ‘70s, when I visited Cuba to report on the nation’s fanatical passion for sports, the most frequent topic of discussion was the possibility of seeing “Great Leaguers” play games in Cuba.

Last week, the White House announced President Clinton has approved a loosening of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, including letting the Orioles play those two games. The only apparent hitch is a proviso that the proceeds go to an appropriate charity, not Castro’s government.

However, before we fantasize about a Cuba-Orioles showdown, we should acknowledge two difficulties. Don’t be too sure these games will happen. Plenty of Cuban exiles will fight the idea. Castro, upon reflection, might be too savvy to allow these apparently innocent exhibitions; in retrospect, they might someday be seen as a distinctly subversive influence in undermining his authority.

“Castro took enormous amounts of property from many people who’d worked for generations,” points out my friend John Fitzgerald, an Oriole season-ticket holder whose family was driven from Cuba when he was 12 with only the possessions they could carry. “I hate these cutesy ideas. There should be no contact with Castro. Let them play games after they return what they stole from us.”

Ironically, the goals of Cuban exiles might be served by an Orioles game in Havana. People everywhere are drawn powerfully, almost magnetically, toward what they do not have, but deeply want. It’s now a commonplace of Cold War history that the more the Soviet Union’s population learned about the West’s culture, the weaker the Soviet regime became.

Don’t underestimate the power of something as apparently trivial as a sport. Not if the game in question is baseball and the country is Cuba.

Few Americans can imagine what baseball means to Cuban national pride. Supremacy in international baseball events sometimes seems like the island’s only reason to smile.

Nothing in Cuban society evokes more passion--or gives more consolation against decades of privation--than the island’s fabulous baseball tradition, including teams packed with fine players in every Cuban province. Twenty years ago, the intensity of Cuban crowds--there was no admission fee, workers arrived carrying their machetes and cows sometimes wandered through the stands--was almost scary at times. Baseball was more than a release. It was sustenance.

Since then, the Cuban economy has crumbled further. Then, cars were 20 years old but functional. Now, they are comically ancient. Then, there were shortages. Of what? You name it. I never saw a room that had lightbulbs in more than half its sockets. Now, in many cases, there is nothing.

Castro desperately wants much that the Clinton administration is offering in the name of humanitarianism. Resumption of direct postal service. Permission for U.S. firms to sell fertilizer, pesticides and agricultural equipment to independent farmers. And, perhaps most important, authorization for any U.S. citizen--not just family members--to send as much as $1,200 a year to needy recipients in Cuba. Those dollars are gold to a desperate economy.

What Castro does not want, what he has resisted for many years, and what he will probably try to duck out of this time, too, is allowing his people to see Cal Ripken Jr.--in the flesh--on the field at the Stadio in Havana. Ripken, and every other Great Leaguer in an Oriole uniform, is a symbol of the freedom, the wealth and the possibility for open-ended self-fulfillment that America has long represented to people under totalitarian control.

Even Albert Belle--perhaps especially Albert Belle--captures the reason Cubans should despise their lot under Castro. Freedom counts only if it extends to those who seem to the majority to deserve it least. To many, Belle has been the consummate bully. Yet, in American baseball, he is allowed to flourish. Only his own self-destructiveness oppresses him.

In Cuban baseball, in stark contrast, it is absolutely forbidden that authority of any kind be disputed, whether it be the manager, the umpire or, of course, the state. Long ago, I saw the best player in Cuba at the time--Wilfredo Sanchez--called out at second base. Sanchez leaped three feet in the air in rage. Yet, by the time he landed back on Cuban soil, he had composed himself completely and showed no hint of protest at the incorrect call.

What Cubans will see in the eyes of the Orioles, if Castro lets them play, will not be decadent dollar signs--though plenty of Orioles love a buck. They will recognize deeper expressions--ones that all people understand. They’ll see the energy and high spirits that come along with pursuing happiness. They will sense the complete absence of fear in the American players--their relaxation, self-confidence and ability to express themselves freely. In some cases, maybe the Cuban fans will even sense that the Orioles have the freedom to make fools of themselves or defy authority. Plenty of ‘em did that last year, yet not one had to flee the country in a fishing boat.

The Cuban and American players on that field will come from utterly different worlds. From Brady Anderson’s Elvis strut to Will Clark’s smirk to Mike Mussina’s studious Stanford stare, every Cuban fan will sense the gulf between Havana, Cuba, and Baltimore, Maryland. And they’ll want desperately to close that distance.

Fitz, root for the Orioles to go to Cuba. It won’t help Castro. Trust me on this one.