Orioles Game With Cuba Seen as Hit and Error -- 03/25/1999

Orioles Game With Cuba Seen as Hit and Error

25 March, 1999

By Bruce Sullivan
CNS Staff Writer

(CNS) – In Baltimore they play baseball, but in Washington they play hardball.

To Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, Sunday's exhibition game with the Cuban national baseball team in Havana is a chance to showcase the sport on the world stage. But for Rep. Robert Menendez, (D-NJ), Cuba's first major league game in 40 years is not just "a little boy's game played by men," as Casey Stengel once describe professional baseball.

Menendez, who is of Cuban heritage, wrote letters to every Oriole ballplayer urging them to boycott the game, saying that it will send the wrong message "to those in Cuba who are struggling to exercise their basic human and civil rights."

"I am writing to ask that you personally reconsider playing in the exhibition games between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban National Baseball Team," wrote Menendez.

So far, only Oriole pitcher Juan Guzman, who is from the Dominican Republic and lives in a largely Cuban neighborhood in Miami, has decided to sit out the game and not travel with the team to Havana. However, third baseman Cal Ripken Jr. may also miss the game in Havana to be with his father in Maryland, Cal Ripken Sr., who has lung cancer.

But for Angelos, Sunday's game, and another one with the Cuban team scheduled for May 3 in Baltimore, is a huge event for baseball that transcends politics.

"Mr. Angelos considers it a real honor to play ball in Havana," Orioles Director of Public Relations John Maroon told CNS. "This is a big international move for baseball. Something that our owner has been looking forward to for a long time," said Maroon.

Menendez's letter comes in the wake of a recent crackdown by Fidel Castro's communist government on human rights and the Cuban press. Last week four leading activists were imprisoned for three to five years for criticizing the government.

President Clinton has called for the activists' immediate release saying the Cuban government should "respect basic human rights, and seek a peaceful transition to democracy for the long-suffering Cuban people."

Another Cuban-American in Congress, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, (R-FL) opposes the Orioles game in Havana, but says that if the game is inevitable the U.S. and foreign press covering the event should fully cover repression in Cuba while they are there.

"It is critical, at this time of increased repression, for foreign journalists covering Sunday's very untimely game in Havana to meet with and interview Cuban dissidents and independent journalists," Diaz-Balart told CNS.

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) also objects to the game, arguing that U.S. policy towards Cuba is softer than it was towards South Africa when the U.S. imposed strict boycotts on that country because of its racist system of apartheid.

"Its evidence of the vast hypocrisy and a double-standard that exists between the U.S. and the Castro dictatorship," CANF Washington, D.C. Director Jose Cardenas told CNS.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland is an avid fan of the Orioles, and she is arranging for a group of underprivileged boys from Baltimore to attend the game in Havana. Angelos has offered to charter a plane to fly about 100 children and 50 chaperones to the game in Havana.

Mikulski said that exchanges based sports can further understanding between nations.

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