WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States denied on Thursday it was
                  engaging in baseball diplomacy with Cuba's Communist government by
                  allowing a Major League baseball team to play in Havana on Sunday.

                  A senior State Department official said Sunday's game between the
                  Baltimore Orioles and Cuba's national team was part of a process of
                  building bridges with the Cuban people and not a move toward closer ties
                  with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

                  Any proceeds from the game and a May 3 rematch in Baltimore will not be
                  seen by the Castro government, but will go to fund sports activities, mainly
                  among Cuban youth, he said.

                  "It would be a major misconception to call this baseball diplomacy. It is
                  people-to-people contacts, very simply," the official said.

                  The plans for the games have come under fire from Castro opponents who
                  say this is no time to be playing baseball with Cuba, given a recent
                  crackdown on dissidents on the island.

                  "In light of the repression that is going on, it is more important than ever that
                  we pursue these people-to-people contacts," the U.S. official said. "If
                  anything we want to redouble the effort. Now is the time that the Cuban
                  people need to know that we are reaching out," he said.

                  Cable sports network ESPN plans to broadcast Sunday's 12 p.m. EST
                  (1700 GMT) game, the first by a Major League team since March 1959,
                  two months after Castro's revolution.

                  The State Department would not disclose the sum ESPN will pay Cuba for
                  broadcast rights. "We licensed them to spend reasonable and customary
                  fees," the U.S. official said.

                  Washington has sought to isolate Castro for 37 years with an economic
                  embargo that was toughened by Congress in 1996 after Cuba shot down
                  two small planes flown by an exile group from Miami.

                  Government documents made public on Thursday show that the State
                  Department considered baseball as a way to break the ice with Cuba in
                  1975 in a bid to repeat the success "ping pong diplomacy" had in opening up
                  relations with Communist China.

                  But Secretary of State Henry Kissinger twice rejected the proposals by
                  aides and then baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, according to
                  declassified memorandums, cables and letters made public by the National
                  Security Archive, an independent foreign policy research institution.

                  The papers show that high level officials in Washington believed baseball, a
                  national passion in Cuba, could help bury Cold War political hostility and
                  establish a new relationship with Castro.