Cuban Aces Charm A Baseball-Loving City

By Tim Padgett/Baltimore

Its beloved, hapless Orioles haven't given this gritty port city much to cheer about lately, and neither did the drizzly weather last Monday. But you could feel a tropical sizzle building as the lights came up at Camden Yards that evening, and about 150 police officers--three times the usual contingent--surrounded the place. A salsa band heated up the bricks behind left field, and the usual ballpark air of stale beer and popcorn gave way to the exotic aromas of rum-and-mint mojitos and fine Havana cigars, which Yanqui yuppies puffed in violation of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. In the parking lot, protesters shrieked, "Beisbol, si! Cuba, no!"

The occasion was a rare visit by Cuba's national baseball team, which--no surprise--whipped the O's with a score of 12-6, in a rematch of their game in Havana back in March. Even more impressive, the team and its wily and dictatorial owner, a fellow named Castro, managed to win a round of baseball diplomacy.

To understand how, it helps to know two facts familiar to every Baltimore fan. The Orioles have the third highest payroll ($80 million) in major league baseball. And they have the American League's worst record. That's the kind of capitalist contradiction that Fidel Castro loves to exploit. Dirt poor but sports crazed, Cuba boasts one of the world's richest lodes of baseball talent--and proved it in Baltimore, as its stars savaged Oriole pitchers for 18 hits. (Mercifully, the Cubans, who use aluminum bats at home, had only a month to train with wooden ones.)

Even Baltimore loyalists were struck by the way players like third baseman Omar Linares, who earns about $100 a month, evoked the grace of Joe DiMaggio and other major league greats of the past. The Cubans' joyful hustle offered quite a contrast to the surly indifference of millionaire Orioles like Albert Belle, who was fanned repeatedly by Cuban pitchers. Says Baltimore fan Paul Koehnlein, a 41-year-old electrical engineer: "The Cubans fill every inning with the heart and the attention to fundamentals that U.S. players don't show our kids anymore."

Even before last Monday's game, millions of U.S. fans wished their teams could land a Cuban like Livan or Orlando Hernandez, the brothers who helped pitch the Florida Marlins and New York Yankees to World Series crowns in 1997 and 1998. But that can happen only if players defect and leave their families behind, as the Hernandezes did: Livan through Mexico and Orlando by boat. None defected last week, even though U.S. sports agents were practically leaning over the rails waving contracts.

More Cubans could play here, of course, if the U.S. relaxed its embargo. Demonstrating outside Camden Yards, Ernest Mailhot, of the small Miami Coalition to End the Embargo, hoped that "through the players, Americans can see the Cuban people instead of Fidel."

Mailhot was outnumbered, though, by Cuban Americans who oppose any talk of easing sanctions against an oppressive government that they say stole their property. An anti-Castro militant from Miami charged onto the field Monday, but was quickly body-slammed by a hotheaded Cuban national umpire.

Back in Miami, there were signs the debate is becoming more civil. Days before the game, authorities at Miami International Airport barred the sale of Cigar Aficionado magazine, whose cover asked, IS IT TIME TO END THE EMBARGO? As soon as he heard of the ban, Mayor Alex Penelas, part of a younger, more open-minded generation of Cuban Americans, quickly lifted it, and with strong public backing.

Sadly, there have been very different signals from Castro. Shortly before the game in March, he convicted four dissidents under draconian new antisedition laws. And he kept the man who is widely considered the world's best shortstop, German Mesa, from traveling to the Orioles game, for fear he would defect.

Linares, at his Baltimore hotel after the game, told me he wouldn't defect "if it means leaving Cuba and my family." That's good news for Castro, who could use more of Linares' brand of diplomacy. But it's too bad for U.S. baseball fans, who could use more of his brand of baseball.