The game, set for March 28, will mark the first time a Major
League Baseball team has played in Cuba since Castro's 1959
revolution.
It is one of several moves to boost contacts between the two
estranged countries, although a recent crackdown on dissidents
in the Communist-ruled island has soured the mood.
"The CANF believes that the idea of doing a baseball game
at this point in time is not only insensitive, but patently
offensive, " said Mariela Ferretti of the Cuban American
National Foundation, the main anti-Castro exile group.
Before the game was confirmed Sunday, exiles protested
outside the Fort Lauderdale Stadium where the Orioles played an
exhibition game against the Florida Marlins. They brandished
signs saying: "Freedom is the only game Cuba needs'' and
''Orioles don't play ball with tyrants'' as fans streamed in.
The agreement was reached by Major League Baseball, the
Orioles and the Players Association for the Cuban Institute of
Sports and the Cuban national team. It calls for a second game
to be played in Baltimore on a date to be determined.
Plans for the games, proposed as part of an alteration of
the long-standing U.S. embargo of Cuba, had been stalled over
the question of what to do with any profits that might come.
Washington wanted any proceeds benefit the Cuban people, not the
government. U.S. officials suggested they be distributed by a
group such as the church aid agency Caritas. Cuba proposed any
profits go to its efforts to help victims of Hurricane Mitch,
which ravaged Central America in 1998.
Rene Guim, spokesman for Joe Cubas, an agent for several
U.S.-based Cuban baseball players, told Reuters: "I think it is
disgusting that a team from the United States major league is
going to go down and play the Cuban national team in a country
where human rights are not ever respected.''
He hoped that if the game in Baltimore took place "every
one of the national team players defects to stay here''.
Several top Cuban players have fled their homeland to play
in the United States, among them Orlando "el Duque'' Hernandez
of the New York Yankees and brother Livan Hernandez of the
Florida Marlins. Livan was the 1997 World Series Most Valuable
Player while Orlando helped the Yankees claim the 1998 title.
Livan, quoted in Sunday's Miami Herald, said: "If its
something people could benefit from, then I could say maybe. But
if Fidel is going to get the money then forget it. And it will
be difficult for him not to get the money.''
But a leading moderate exile group welcomed what is being
has been dubbed "baseball diplomacy''.
"Any diplomacy is good. Anything that gets people together
is good. This gesture is to the Cuban people - there's nothing
political about it,'' said Raul de Velasco, president of the
Cuban Committee for Democracy.
"If every time there's a crackdown in Cuba, the U.S. reacts
by getting harder, it is playing the Cuban government's game.''
While many in Miami's exile community are implacable in
their hatred for Castro, the CCD is prominent among a growing
number of voices advocating dialogue rather than confrontation.
In the week leading up to the baseball game, a number of U.S.
rock stars, including Florida icon Jimmy Buffett and Bonnie
Raitt, will visit Havana to write songs with Cuban artists and
stage a big open-air concert.
But despite the outstretched hands, Cuba has launched its
biggest crackdown on dissidents in years in a defiant response
to foreign pressure on Havana for political change, including
trying four leading dissidents for sedition last week.
"What the Cuban people need is for Cuba to open up to the
world and to learn something else outside of Cuba such as
democracy or independence. We don't know what the point of the
baseball game would be,'' said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the
Miami-based Democracy Movement.