The Orioles will make history when they arrive in Cuba on Saturday, but their goodwill baseball trip to Havana re-energizes a complex and emotionally charged debate about the advisability of playing ball -- either literally or figuratively -- with the enemy.
In other words, does sports diplomacy work?
It is a question with no clear-cut answer.
The Olympic movement was intended to help foster better relations between nations through the goodwill of athletic competition, but the impact of the Olympic Games on international relations in the 20th century is arguable.
Black track star Jesse Owens upstaged Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with his dominating performance at the 1936 Berlin Games -- in what might be the most famous international encounter between sports and politics -- but that didn't cause Hitler to rethink his theory of Aryan superiority or dissuade him from pursuing an insane attempt to dominate Europe.
The U.S. Table Tennis Team paved the way for a more open economic and diplomatic relationship between the United States and Communist China with its 1971 foray into that closed society. But critics of the Cuba mission wonder if that historic trip really had the desired outcome -- and raise the specter of Tiananmen Square as evidence that "pingpong diplomacy" did little to improve human rights in the world's most populous country.
There are other recent examples -- notably the ground-breaking visit that the USA Wrestling team made to Iran last year -- but the pingpong trip has become the historical model for each ensuing attempt to bridge a wide cultural and philosophical divide through international sports competition.
That's why both sides in the debate over the appropriateness of the Orioles' visit to Havana this weekend use the China initiative as evidence to support their divergent opinions.
"It all depends on what it [sports diplomacy] is meant to accomplish," said Florida Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Belart. "In the case of China, the United States felt that it had a strategic interest in creating a balance of power with Russia. The Nixon administration believed that it was in our strategic interests, and that's why 'pingpong diplomacy' was approved.
"That was totally different from reaching out to a moribund, bankrupt, feudal dictatorship that remains the only non-democratic state in this hemisphere."
The Kissinger years
Of course, if there wasn't some cultural or political tension, it wouldn't be sports diplomacy. "Pingpong diplomacy" really was the first step in what former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would later explain was a triangular diplomatic effort to exploit the historic animosity between China and the Soviet Union.
"The hostility between China and the Soviet Union served our purposes best if we maintained closer relations with each side than they did with each other," Kissinger explained in his book. "The rest could be left to the dynamic of events."
It may be convenient for some critics of the Cuba venture to point to continuing human rights abuses in China as a justification for the continued isolation of Fidel Castro's repressive communist regime, but "pingpong diplomacy" -- which was followed by Richard Nixon's historic visit to China -- clearly altered the chemistry of the Cold War and opened one of the world's most mysterious nations to the Western world.
"Pingpong diplomacy created a graceful way for two ideologically suspicious countries to test each other's willingness to accommodate each other," said Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center and a former Bush administration official.
The Cuban overture does not have such enormous geopolitical implications, but there are enough parallels to draw some lesser comparisons. Both initiatives began with non-diplomatic contact and later were officially sanctioned by the U.S. State Department. The China trip demystified a society that had been all but closed to the United States. Cuba may not be quite as mysterious, but it also has been largely closed to Americans for nearly 40 years.
Angelos defends stance
Orioles owner Peter Angelos stops short of citing the success of "pingpong diplomacy" as a motivating factor in his three-year pursuit of a baseball exchange with Cuba, but said recently that his ultimate goal in organizing the goodwill mission was to move the United States closer to normal relations with the island nation.
Angelos concedes that the human rights situation in China remains unsatisfactory, but he doesn't believe that is a legitimate reason to diminish the significance of the well-intentioned attempt by the U.S. Table Tennis Team to build a small bridge of friendship between the people of the United States and China.
"I thought it was a good idea," Angelos said. "Do I think [the relationship] has evolved in a way that is satisfactory? The answer is no. But that has nothing to do with whether someone should have gone to China. The idea of opening up China was a good idea then and will always be a good idea."
He clearly feels the same way about the Cuba trip, even though the Orioles have twice been the target of Cuban-American demonstrations at their spring training facility in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"The overture to Cuba can never be a wrong thing to do," Angelos said. "It's what you do thereafter that determines what the ultimate outcome will be, but the opening is always good."
'Apples and oranges'
Though there are some obvious parallels between the Cuba mission and "pingpong diplomacy," there is a major difference that makes it difficult to align the two trips in the context of human rights.
"We're talking about apples and oranges," said Jan Berris, vice president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, which sponsored a reciprocal visit by the Chinese Table Tennis Team to the United States in 1972. "Our purpose was not to tell the Chinese how to run their country. It was to open up a dialogue between the two countries. In the long run, that was only going to be in the interest of world peace.
"By the same token, baseball diplomacy is not about telling the Cubans how they should run their country. It should be about opening a dialogue so that a whole range of issues can be discussed."
The benefits -- or lack of them -- may not be apparent for years. The United States trades liberally with China now, where there once was no economic relationship. Thousands of American tourists travel there each year, where once there was almost no people-to-people contact between the two countries.
Wrestling in Iran
The first visit by the United States wrestling team to the Islamic Republic of Iran in February 1998 eventually may have a similar impact on that country, which has considered the United States an enemy since Shah Riza Pahlavi was deposed by Islamic fundamentalists in 1979.
U.S. wrestlers were received warmly by Iranian sports fans after Iranian president Mohammad Khatami -- a moderate Shiite cleric -- publicly called for a dialogue between Americans and Iranians to bring about "a crack in the wall of mistrust between the two countries."
There has been no dynamic change in the strained official relationship between the two nations, but proponents of the trip hope that it enhanced the likelihood of improved official relations.
The American athletes took their role as goodwill ambassadors very seriously. Arizona wrestler Zeke Jones even picked up an Iranian flag and waved it in front of the cheering crowd during the final day of competition.
"When the U.S. wrestlers went to Iran, we called it 'pin-down diplomacy,' playing off 'pingpong diplomacy,' " said Bruce Laingen, who was the senior diplomat in Tehran when the U.S. Embassy staff was taken hostage in 1979. "They went twice. They were good ambassadors. I think that kind of thing -- the people-to-people contact, the search for common ground when you don't have an official relationship -- is very important. It can help make a difference over time, and I believe it will make a difference."
Angelos believes that sports creates the comfortable climate for informal diplomacy, because it provides a non-political platform that philosophical opposites can occupy at the same time. And baseball is the perfect sport for the Cuba mission because it is the national pastime of both countries.
"Sports and certainly music, the arts and literature are really vehicles to understanding through which people can share a common experience, even if their governments may be at odds," Angelos said. "Sports is No. 1. That's why it's the perfect medium for bringing people together."
Sun staff writer Mark Matthews contributed to this article.