By LINDA ROBERTSON

Eddie Oropesa sat in his comfortable West Kendall home, with his trio of cars in the driveway, his wife, kids and parents in the family room and his Major League Baseball mementos on the bookshelf, and he pondered where he might have been instead.

If not for a leap of faith he took 13 years ago, he might have been in San Diego on Monday night, wearing a red uniform with a Cuban flag stitched on the sleeve, playing against Japan in the World Baseball Classic championship game.

But Oropesa dismissed the thought with a wave of his big left hand over his bald head. He taught himself long ago not to look back or forward, but to live in the here and now. Otherwise, he never would have been able to climb that outfield fence in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and jump to the other side.

He was a 21-year-old pitcher for the Cuban national team in 1993 when he slipped off his spikes, scrambled over the wall and ran through a parking lot yelling ''Asylum! Asylum!'' as his teammates called out, ``Eddie, are you crazy?''

He had decided to defect, to become a traitor and an exile and a professional baseball player and an American. It was a complicated stew of feelings in his gut then, and it was the same Monday as he watched his former team lose 10-6 to Japan in the title game.

He didn't feel pride, exactly. He's cynical about how Fidel Castro uses the baseball team as a propaganda tool. Nor did he feel hatred. He knows the Cuban people, shown on TV cheering from Havana's Parque Central, deserve to indulge their love for baseball.

Maybe sympathy would be the right word. He identifies with the Cuban players, who were playing in the stadium where he was the Opening Day winner for the Padres in 2004. There they were, before a major-league audience, competing against major-league opponents, yet they will be back in isolation today, a hidden treasure on a forbidden island, 90 miles by boat or raft, but a million miles in their dreams from the nation of Major League Baseball.

They'll be playing, as they have declared for almost half a century, ``for the love of the people rather than love of money.''

Oropesa knows it isn't that simple or noble.

Defecting -- the logistics of sneaking away -- is easy. Almost 100 Cuban players have done it since Rene Arocha defected in Miami in 1991. But saying goodbye is not.

''I've been there,'' Oropesa said, who was the third Cuban to defect. ``They are torn, because they would have to leave their whole lives behind. On the other hand, they can't help feeling the pull of freedom and opportunity. I feel bad for them, but I feel worse for Cubans who have to leave on inner tubes.''

During the past two weeks, the Cubans have been tempted by the plenty they've seen in the cities they've visited. They know their stock has risen in the eyes of pro scouts. But no one has defected. They are under pressure. If the players stay in the U.S., their relatives would be subjected to ruin in Cuba.

After Oropesa defected during the World University Games, his parents and his wife, Rita, lost their jobs. He didn't hold his first-born son until Eddie Jr. was 3 years old.

''I was punished,'' Oropesa said. ``It's a difficult personal decision to start over. Cuba is 40 years behind, so coming here was like coming to another world. But I didn't want my children to grow up in a country with no hope.

'Guys from the Cuban team called, and I told them, `The determination has to be deep within yourself.' I know I would do it again.''

Oropesa had $60 and his uniform as he headed to Miami with an uncle 13 years ago. He spread that very same jersey across his dining room table Monday. It is covered with the autographs of Cuban baseball players who have signed it clandestinely over the years, whenever Oropesa or his agent handed it to them. He also has his old Matanzas uniform, and on it is the faded footprint of his baby boy. Rita sent it to him as he toiled in the minor leagues.

'It's not the Cubans' fault they have to wear that uniform,'' Oropesa said. ``The uniform you wear is the one you defend as an athlete. The difference is that in the United States, you're not wearing the uniform of the Republicans or the Democrats. But in Cuba, you're wearing the uniform of communism.''

Oropesa, 34 and a free agent, became an American citizen in 2003. He has no desire to return to Cuba until it is a democratic nation.

Don't most of us spend our lives trying to get back home, at least subconsciously? Isn't getting back home the object of baseball?

Yet Cuban exiles can't go home. It doesn't exist anymore. They are stuck in a suspended state of longing.

Oropesa's sense of homelessness was acute during the WBC, because he was not allowed to play for Cuba.

''We couldn't play for our native country, like [Dominican] David Ortiz or [Puerto Rican] Carlos Delgado did,'' he said. ``We were in limbo. We had no voice. We could only sit and watch.''

Nor did he derive any satisfaction from the unexpected success of the Cuban team, the only one without a single professional player on the roster.

''In the end,'' he said, "The only one who wins is Fidel.''