BALTIMORE – The Baltimore Orioles took on the Cuban all-stars last night amid a sea of protesters who say Fidel Castro is using his team as pawns in a twisted political game.
Riot cops on horses watched nervously more than 1,500 anti-Castro picketers outside Baltimore’s Camden Yards ball field as they chanted “Cuba, si! Castro, no!” and “Freedom for Cuba.”
“The Cuban players are not our enemies. They are the victims and they are being paraded around here by Castro,” Pedro Gonzalez of Union City, N.J., said of the Cuban dictator.
But other American Latinos attempted to sweep aside the nearly 40 years of U.S.-Cuban animosity to enjoy the sheer excitement of the game.
Cuba’s 25-man national team – which lost to the Orioles 3-2 in 11 innings at Havana’s Latinoamericano Stadium on March 28 – wants revenge in front of the sellout American crowd.
The two-game exhibition series has been dubbed “baseball diplomacy” after the “ping-pong diplomacy” that was used to open relations with China two decades ago.
Organizers, including Orioles owner Peter Angelos, hope the games will improve U.S.-Cuban relations – symbolized by the 37-year-old U.S. economic embargo against the Communist island nation.