By C.J. KARAMARGIN
             States News Service

             WASHINGTON -- Allowing an exhibition baseball game to be played between the
             Baltimore Orioles and a Cuban all-star team would be like participating in Nazi
             Germany's 1936 Olympic Games, a South Florida congressman said Thursday.

             Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, reaffirmed his opposition to an
             exhibition game following a meeting at his Capitol Hill office with Donald Fehr,
             executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, and other
             members of Congress.

             ``It would be like going to play in apartheid South Africa, something that never
             occurred, or it would be like going to Hitler's Olympics in 1936, something that did
             occur but was unconscionable and rightfully seen by history as shameful,''
             Diaz-Balart said.

             The players association should ``show solidarity with brother workers in an
             oppressed land,'' Diaz-Balart said. ``The union, if it wishes, can refuse to play.''

             The Clinton administration last month authorized the Orioles to negotiate with the
             Cuban government to play two games, one in Baltimore and one in Havana.

             ``If we espouse labor rights in the United States, why would we go to a country
             where baseball players are treated as pawns of the Castro propaganda machine?''
             Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said after the meeting.

             Fehr declined to speculate on what will happen next.
 

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