By Peter Kornbluh
Sunday, January 17, 1999; Page B05
With his visit to Havana this weekend, Baltimore Orioles owner Peter
Angelos is pursuing a personal mission as well as a longtime major league
interest--to "play ball" in Cuba. President Clinton's recent authorization
for
the Orioles to explore exhibition games both in Havana and at Camden
Yards--an easy addition to the package of initiatives the president
announced on Jan. 5 after rejecting the notion of establishing a bipartisan
commission to review Cuba policy--may become one of the most
significant "people-to-people" events in recent U.S.-Cuban relations.
A competition between the best of baseball in the Western hemisphere
would seem to be an apolitical, uncontroversial event. Yet for years,
Washington has embargoed such games along with food and medicine and
forbidden commercial trade with Fidel Castro's Cuba. The Orioles' effort
to field a team in Havana culminates more than 25 years of efforts--some
of them top secret--involving teams such as the Yankees and Orioles, the
commissioner of baseball and Cuban authorities, to find the common
ground on the diamond that has eluded the governments in Washington and
Havana.
For Cuba, sports have long been a pride of the revolution and an
ambassador of the nation--and none more so than the No. 1 national
pastime of baseball. Ironically, the game was an import that came with
U.S. occupation early in the century, when the Marines brought bats,
gloves and balls and taught Cubans how to use them. Now, Cuban players
are considered among the world's finest. Livan Hernandez, Cuba's star
pitcher before his defection, for example, was named MVP of the 1997
World Series; his half-brother Orlando was given a $25 million contract
by
the New York Yankees and won Game 2 of the 1998 World Series.
Cuban baseball teams have dominated competition all over the world.
Cuba won the Olympic gold medal in 1992, and, in 1996, ended a
39-game winning streak by the U.S. team and went on to take the gold
again.
The first significant attempt to arrange a competition, revealed in
declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, came
at
the height of the Cold War in the mid-1970s. At that time, according to
records that show negotiations lasting throughout 1975, the Ford
administration deliberated in secret about the possibility of sending an
all-star team to Cuba. U.S. officials played up the possibility that baseball
could be to Cuba what table tennis was to China. "The Chinese ping-pong
players were accepted by the U.S. public as a good way to break the ice
between two nations separated by decades of hostility," argued a
"Secret/NoDis" memorandum prepared for Henry Kissinger who was then
secretary of state. "Baseball with Cuba would serve a similar purpose."
On the U.S. side, the initiative's principal promoter was Bowie Kuhn, then
commissioner of baseball. "Basically, Bowie wanted to be the ping-pong
diplomat of Cuba," recalls former assistant secretary of state William
Rogers.
At a dinner party in December 1974, Kuhn told Kissinger of the League's
"interest in playing some games in Cuba." In a follow-up letter dated Jan.
14, 1975, the commissioner requested permission to explore the idea with
Cuban officials. "I have information that Castro favors the project," Kuhn
wrote.
On Feb. 11 in Mexico City, Kuhn met with four Cuban officials, who
invited the commissioner to assemble an all-star team that would play an
exhibition game on March 29 and conduct a series of sports clinics with
Cuban players in Havana. The meeting, Kuhn reported back to Rogers,
was "marked by friendliness and a keen interest in being constructive."
All that remained for the first pitch to be thrown in Havana was Kissinger's
authorization. His aides pressed him to give Kuhn the green light. In a
Feb.
19 memo, Rogers and Kissinger's aide, Lawrence Eagleburger, laid out the
arguments for "baseball diplomacy" in Cuba:
* The games would be seen as a shrewd Yankee political move.
* A baseball competition would undercut the demonology in Cuban
propaganda about the United States.
* It would be difficult for Cuban exiles to take issue with the competition
despite their general uneasiness about any change in U.S.-Cuban relations.
* Picking a game the United States would be likely to win would go well
with Americans who are depressed by the regimented victories of the
communists in Olympic games.
Rogers even drafted a secret memorandum to send to the Castro
government stating that the "United States is prepared to arrange the visit
of major league players to Cuba in March." But Kissinger told his aides
that he was "against [the] proposal to send a baseball team to Cuba at
this
time."
The ever-tenacious commissioner revived his proposal after Castro
endorsed the idea of a binational competition. In a May meeting with Sen.
George McGovern, the Cuban leader--who once harbored hopes of
pitching in the U.S. league--expressed his "enthusiasm" for an all-star
competition. His main concern, as McGovern reported back to the
Department of State, was whether Cuban players would lose their
Olympic status if they competed against major leaguers from the United
States.
To convince Kissinger, Rogers told Kuhn to "draw up a scenario, including
proposed personalities, timing, and publicity" but warned him that "keeping
the matter confidential was essential." In June, Kuhn sent an "Outline
of
Cuban Exhibition Game Proposal" that called for a game during spring
training in 1976, to be telecast by an American network in cooperation
with Cuba's Broadcasting Institute with the rights payments split.
"The purpose of the trip would be to engender cordial relations between
Baseball in Cuba and in the United States," Kuhn wrote. "There would be
no political aspect or purpose."
Despite a recommendation from his aides and pressure from commissioner
Kuhn, Kissinger called a timeout on baseball diplomacy in 1976. Political
considerations outweighed the sheer thrill of the sport; the Ford
administration did not want to chance losing public support for their Cuba
policy for the sake of a game.
The Clinton administration also fears the political impact of growing
opposition to the longstanding U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. For that
reason, the president has refused multiple requests from the Orioles over
the past three years to take a team to Havana. But last week, amid a series
of U.S. proposals to expand the flow of money and people to Cuba--all of
which the Cuban government has denounced as "deceptive
maneuvering"--Clinton relented.
To be sure, many details remain to be worked out. They range from
whether the bats will be wood (as they are in the American professional
leagues) or aluminum (as they are in the Cuban league) to what will happen
with the proceeds from the games. (The Clinton administration has made
it
clear that they should not go to the Castro government, but to aid charities
serving the Cuban people. The Cuban government has suggested that they
be donated to hurricane relief efforts in Central America.) And the Orioles
may well face boycotts or protests from those who oppose any type of
contact with Cuba while Castro remains in power.
But any unsportsmanlike conduct by the anti-Castro lobby will stand in
stark contrast to the professionalism, honor, competitive talent and mutual
respect that the Orioles and Cuban players hope to bring to the level
playing field of the ball park. Regardless of the final score, that approach
is
surely a winner for U.S.-Cuban relations.
Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive in
Washington and editor of "Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA
Report on the Invasion of Cuba" (New Press).
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company