As ping-pong diplomacy helped pave the way for a relationship with communist China, baseball may help ease the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba. The final score won’t matter in an exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban National Team.
What will matter is the symbolism of the United States and Cuba sharing their national pastimes with a Cuban defector playing for the American team—and other Cuban-born major league players being cheered as returning heroes in Havana.
President Barack Obama said in Tuesday’s speech he came to Havana “to bury the last remnants of the Cold War.”
56 years of enmity cannot be erased in a two-and-a-half day presidential visit. Or a nine-inning baseball game. But it is a start.
Don’t Give Fidel Castro the Last Laugh
It’s one thing to be respectful of the Cuban people — and I’m not suggesting we celebrate anyone’s death. But it is another to sidestep the historical horrors of a murderous, 60-year military regime and strike a pose of diplomatic equanimity that assuages only gluttons of insincerity.