Columnist Dean Juipe: ESPN shows U.S. viewers Cuba’s alive

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 29, 1999 | 9:50 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

It was a baseball game played on something of a lumpy field in a stadium that ordinarily is overrun by wild dogs looking for a handout.

It was also a chance for every American -- and perhaps every Cuban -- to reconsider the relationship between two divergent yet similar countries separated only by some 90 miles of ocean.

Prior to Sunday, the game between the Baltimore Orioles and a team of Cuban all-stars at Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano Stadium appeared of little consequence. From a news standpoint, the event was attracting more opposition than acclaim in the U.S.

Several members of Congress expressed their unhappiness with it, as did the union that represents Major League Baseball's umpires.

Shame on them. Because within minutes of the opening of ESPN's telecast it became apparent that most of us in this country could use a good slap in the face when it comes to how we view Cuba.

This may not have been the primary intent of the game, but what an awakening.

Here's the U.S. dropping bombs on Kosovo, perhaps in violation of its own Constitution, while doing its best to ignore a small island country off the tip of Florida simply because it has a totalitarian dictator.

Credit baseball commissioner Bud Selig and Orioles owner Peter Angelos with allowing many Americans to emerge from their Rip Van Winkle slumber and see what we've been missing. Fidel Castro, now 72 years old and in power a full 40 years, may not merit our sympathies but that doesn't mean his people deserve a perpetual cold shoulder from the U.S.

Castro sat between Selig and Angelos for the game, which the Orioles eventually won 3-2 in 11 innings. It was the finest, most exciting exhibition game in the history of baseball -- even if admission was restricted to 55,000 of Castro's invited guests.

But even if the Orioles had won 15-0, as some thought they would and as they might in the May 3 rematch in Baltimore, the score was irrelevant. The Cubans hadn't seen an American baseball team since a minor-league game between the Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings and the Havana Sugar Kings on July 25, 1959, ended early due to random gunfire in the stadium. Organized baseball pulled out of Cuba and, for other political reasons, the U.S. quickly imposed trade restrictions on Cuba that left it almost completely isolated.

President Clinton eased those restrictions somewhat in 1994 and now it really looks like the time is right to go the rest of the way. Any country of 11 million people that loves baseball as much as the Cubans do can't be all bad.

If it's up to baseball to take the lead in this matter, it should lobby for allowing a Cuban team to participate in triple-A baseball. Cuba has several players (who defected to the U.S.) currently in the major leagues and, based on Sunday's game alone, enough talent to stock its own minor-league franchise.

We may be all dead and gone before this happens, but someday Havana will have a team in the major leagues.

When it does, hopefully they won't forget March 28, 1999, and the game with the Orioles and the fact it was televised to a startled America. What we saw: Cuba is poor materialistically but rich in spirit.

It's a place where Ernest Hemingway is required reading.

It's also a place and a people that shouldn't be subjected to our eternal condemnation.