From an article published at that time:
Cuba Exiles Enraged By Baseball Diplomacy
4.18 p.m. ET (2119 GMT) March 8, 1999
MIAMI - U.S. baseball team the Baltimore Orioles will play a ground-breaking game against Cuba's national team in Havana this month but many Miami-based exiles Monday denounced ''baseball diplomacy'', fearing Cuban leader Fidel Castro would be the big winner.
The game, set for March 28, will mark the first time a Major League Baseball team has played in Cuba since Castro's 1959 revolution.
It is one of several moves to boost contacts between the two estranged countries, although a recent crackdown on dissidents in the Communist-ruled island has soured the mood.
"The CANF believes that the idea of doing a baseball game at this point in time is not only insensitive, but patently offensive, " said Mariela Ferretti of the Cuban American National Foundation, the main anti-Castro exile group.
Before the game was confirmed Sunday, exiles protested outside the Fort Lauderdale Stadium where the Orioles played an exhibition game against the Florida Marlins. They brandished signs saying: "Freedom is the only game Cuba needs'' and ''Orioles don't play ball with tyrants'' as fans streamed in.
The agreement was reached by Major League Baseball, the Orioles and the Players Association for the Cuban Institute of Sports and the Cuban national team. It calls for a second game to be played in Baltimore on a date to be determined.
Plans for the games, proposed as part of an alteration of the long-standing U.S. embargo of Cuba, had been stalled over the question of what to do with any profits that might come. Washington wanted any proceeds benefit the Cuban people, not the government. U.S. officials suggested they be distributed by a group such as the church aid agency Caritas. Cuba proposed any profits go to its efforts to help victims of Hurricane Mitch, which ravaged Central America in 1998.
Rene Guim, spokesman for Joe Cubas, an agent for several U.S.-based Cuban baseball players, told Reuters: "I think it is disgusting that a team from the United States major league is going to go down and play the Cuban national team in a country where human rights are not ever respected.''
More:
http://www.christusrex.org/www2/fcf/exilesenraged.html
It's important to mention Joe Cubas was later sued by Cuban baseball players in the US for cheating them wildly, screwing them all out of outrageous blobs of money, and Cubas was banished from associating himself with baseball forever. He really worked these players over. That's why, it must be assumed, he didn't want other agents getting the same advantage of abusing their ignorance of US American ways, and their trust in would-be agents. Last I heard, he's associated with real estate in Florida, now.
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Cuba, Orioles Take The Field In Game Filled With Intrigue
May 3, 1999|By WILLIAM E. GIBSON and RAFAEL LORENTE Washington Bureau and Staff Writer Dana Calvo contributed to this report.
BALTIMORE — A packed stadium, a national television audience, the possibility of defections and plenty of protests will give tonight's exhibition game between the Baltimore Orioles and a Cuban national team political intrigue to go with some potentially exciting baseball.
Will the stands erupt with demonstrations? Will Cuba send its best players and risk their defection?Will Cuban-American pilots risk arrest by dropping leaflets over the stadium?
What kind of secret game plan has Cuban leader Fidel Castro been hatching while meeting with team members at closed practice sessions in Havana?
All these questions will be answered when the highly paid Orioles and the Cubans take the field tonight.
Far less clear will be the game's lasting impact, if any, on American public opinion and U.S.-Cuba relations.
Unlike the ``ping-pong diplomacy'' matches that helped open communist China to trade and commerce in the 1970s, this baseball series appears headed for little more than a strained form of people-to-people contact and the reaffirmation of a mutual love for bisbol.
More:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1999-05-03/news/9905030121_1_cuba-people-to-people-contact-people-to-people-exchanges
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