Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez said he would comment only after the proposal had been analyzed. The baseball exchange is aimed at easing the plight of Cubans while maintaining sanctions against the Castro government. The measures follow an initiative by Pope John Paul II, who visited Cuba a year ago this week. The Clinton administration said the games will be allowed only if profits go to humanitarian assistance in Cuba and not to Fidel Castro's government. The Orioles are expected to send a group to Cuba as early as this week to negotiate arrangements for the exhibition games, with one in Baltimore and one in Cuba.
Baseball is a wonderful medium in bringing people together.
This has been demonstrated time and again in a variety of contexts. Once a fount of major league baseball talent, Cuba has been largely isolated from U.S. professional baseball since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. The U.S. government has blocked major league visits to Cuba. The last major league team to visit Cuba was the Brooklyn Dodgers, who trained in Havana in 1947. In 1960, an exhibition game between the Orioles and Cincinnati Reds was canceled.