Strike one.

If you are a Cuban baseball player contemplating defection this weekend, the first pitch you see is the one to hit. It's the golden opportunity: a big fat lob, right down the middle, served up by the United States of America and its Spanish-speaking team of eight Immigration and Naturalization inspectors, dressed in the home white uniforms.

The pitch will come at you before you can size up the B&O; Warehouse, take batting practice at Camden Yards, feel the cool of the outfield grass or hear the cheers of an American sellout crowd.

It will come -- perhaps before you're ready for it -- in a room that isn't anything like Oriole Park. The INS' processing area is 17 months old, and cold and modern, with a hard terrazzo floor. "Sterile," the INS calls it, because all the exits are sealed.

You and the rest of the Cuban team pass through there this afternoon, minutes after the Canadian charter company Air Transat delivers you to BWI Airport in a 362-passenger L-1011 jumbo jet. Out of the gate, you turn right and go down the escalators. There, you are greeted by Diana J. Gosnell, the INS port director, 57, a native Marylander with a local accent and a little Spanish. She'll point out the bathrooms and smile.

Bienvenido, hon.

You get in one of eight lines. The only bright colors in the room appear in 20 photographs, blown up on the wall above you, of such scenes as the State House, the Washington Monument, an Ocean City beach, Baltimore rowhouses and Maryland blue crabs. Each line leads to an inspector, sitting in front of a computer. Underneath the desk are three colored buttons, the purposes of which are a government secret.

The line stops 25 feet short of the inspector. It is your turn. As the law requires, you step forward -- alone -- to talk to a federal employee who can change your life.

Don't encourage, discourage

Officially, no one in the 300-member Cuban delegation is expected to defect during the two-day visit to Baltimore to play the Orioles. "We have no information that anything like that would take place," says INS district director Ben Ferro, when asked about the possibility.

Other authorities are similarly neutral. "We are not in the position of encouraging defections," says a senior State Department official. "We're not in the position of discouraging defections."

The Cuban government says it is so confident no one will leave that the delegation will not include much internal security staff.

"You know, it depends on what each player thinks. It's a personal decision for them," says Luis M. Fernandez, first secretary at the Cuban Interests Section, Cuba's quasi-embassy in Washington. "We feel that everyone wants to play for our team.

"It's not our main concern as a country," he adds. "It's something that is in my mind only remotely."

But privately -- the only way that two countries without diplomatic relations can talk -- the prospects for defections are less clear. Cuban officials concede that defections could prove embarrassing. Baltimore police and city officials have been told to expect defections, and INS agents predict that the Cuban delegation will add to the Maryland district's average of 50 asylum claims a year.

The better part of the INS local enforcement staff is assigned to the Cuba visit this weekend. The service has a public, 24-hour hot line for "anyone who may have questions about their rights," Ferro says obliquely.

INS employees have been joking all week that with the Orioles' weak pitching, asylum officers should be stationed near the Cuban bullpen at the ballpark.

The district director himself has firsthand experience with Cuban defectors. Working for the INS in Rome nine years ago, he helped Arturo Sandoval defect during the Cuban trumpeter's tour of Italy with Dizzy Gillespie.

"We're staged here in Baltimore for jumpers," says a top INS official, using service slang for defectors.

"The track record for groups this size has some of them defecting. We're going to make sure our agents are present and available throughout the visit."

But the INS says that no time is as propitious as the moments after arrival. Standard operating procedure for any international flight is that every arriving passenger must speak privately to an inspector. No security goons, or even a wife, may accompany you.

"Sometimes," explains Gosnell, "we have to have sensitive discussions."

Here's the catch: Because of a congressional mandate that the INS must process all passengers on any flight within 45 minutes, these conversation are strictly limited to one minute, roughly the duration of a four-pitch at-bat.

So you will present your passport, visa, and the short form you completed on the plane. The INS inspectors, who train for 4 1/2 months for this job, will not ask you about defection, but they will watch you. If you speak up or show any sign of fear, the INS will put you in protective custody. As a Cuban and citizen of a Communist dictatorship, your asylum request is almost certain to be granted, immigration lawyers say.

This is your minute to jump. The nearest Cuban is 25 feet behind you -- the length of a good bunt.

A path well-traveled

Try swinging at that first pitch.

An inspector will escort you behind the counters and to the left, into the "Secondary Room," with two dozen airport-style gray-blue plastic chairs. When your name is called, you will be led through another door into a hallway.

To the right are two cells, for suspected criminals the INS catches here. Don't worry -- those aren't for you. You'll turn right, into one of two windowless interview rooms. There are chairs, a steel bench, a camera, a computer and a fingerprint machine inside.

If you want to claim asylum, just say so. Or cry. Or speak of your fear of returning to your country. Or use words like refugee or defect. And you will be on your way to meet an INS asylum officer in Arlington, Va.

You won't be the first to jump. The Cuban national team has been decimated by nearly a decade of defections that have severely thinned the island's baseball talent pool and chipped away at its dominance in international amateur competition.

First to grab the chance was Rene Arocha, who walked away from the team during a stopover at Miami International Airport in 1991. His defection cracked the wall that had protected Cuba's national pastime from the outside world. Since then, the national team has lost about 30 players, including major-league stars Rolando Arrojo, Rey Ordonez, and two half-brothers who helped their teams win the World Series: Livan Hernandez of the Florida Marlins, and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the New York Yankees.

Arocha got relatively little for being a pioneer, signing with the St. Louis Cardinals for a small bonus and the then-major-league minimum of $109,000 -- a fortune by Cuban standards. But pitcher Ariel Prieto defected in 1995 and received a $1.2 million signing bonus from the Oakland Athletics. Livan Hernandez's deal with the Marlins was for $4.5 million. So Cuban officials worked harder to discourage players from leaving.

In 1996, Orlando Hernandez and German Mesa were banned from the national team after accusations that they had conspired to defect. Hernandez, of course, succeeded in defecting, but Mesa has been reinstated and is on the list of players eligible for tomorrow night's game at Camden Yards. It is not known whether he made the final 25-man roster.

Recently, the Cuban government loosened some restrictions on players, but defections continue. A Miami-based agent, Joe Cubas, has personally spirited several players away from the Cuban team during international trips. Cubas, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is expected to spend the weekend in Baltimore, trying to make contact with more potential defectors.

Cubas is a man of many reputations. He portrays himself as more of a secret agent than player agent, checking into hotels under assumed names and staging clandestine meetings in unusual places. But he is quite the operator, finagling big contracts for many of his clients and -- by some accounts -- keeping a pretty big chunk of the action for himself.

Livan Hernandez reportedly fired him for trying to charge a 25 percent commission, but Cubas still is viewed as liberator by many in Miami's Cuban exile community. He is given much of the credit for re-establishing a Cuban presence in Major League Baseball.

"I think he's had a major impact," says Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Kevin Malone. "Professional baseball has to be very pleased with Joe. He has helped supply quality players to our game."

And he has made the Cubans rich. Orlando Hernandez's first contract with the Yankees called for $6.6 million over four years.

You, as a member of the team, know all of this. And recent Cuban immigrants to Baltimore -- often called "balseros" because they came in balsas, or rafts -- look at those dollars, and say they would bet all they own that you will try to seek asylum on this trip.

At Sandy's Bar, a Pratt Street hangout for balseros and Marielitos, the informal betting line on defections is three. Mario Collazo, who works at Cafe Madrid on Broadway, says he was willing to leave his family in Cuba with no more prospects than the standard entry-level job for Baltimore balseros: working in a Little Italy kitchen.

"Think of how much more money there is for the players," he says.

Jorge Salas, a balsero who lives in East Baltimore, was a professor of physical education at a Cuban sports institute before he left. As such, he knew Cuban national team second baseman Antonio Pacheco and designated hitter Orestes Kindelan, and considers them friends.

To escape Cuba five years ago, he got on a balsa fashioned from inner tubes and scrap wood. After six days at sea, the last three without food and water, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued him.

"It could be easier for them," says Salas, 40, working at a laundry as he tries to learn English and secure a teaching job. "The biggest thing for a Cuban player is to play in the major leagues. That's what every player I know talks about.

"I'm sure it's pretty tense right now inside the team. People are thinking about looking good at the game, and others are thinking about when the announcers said such nice things about the team during the first game."

What would he say to his friends? "This might be your best chance to get out."

Hotel area cordoned off

Or don't swing.

Stay with your team. Answer the inspector's questions about your passport and the reason for your stay and say nothing more. Walk past the Secondary Room toward baggage claim. Go through customs. Walk out a side door -- away from the press and the public and any protesters -- and board a bus to team headquarters at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel.

But if you want to jump later, there may be other opportunities. INS people are stationed nearby, if you look. Your delegation is twice the size police had initially expected; maybe you can get lost long enough to slip away.

Or maybe it is better to wait until after the game, when you've had your chance to show off for the major-league scouts on a major-league field.

Baltimore police can help you, after a fashion. Their captain and lieutenants have told them to direct asylum requests to the INS. And there is always the INS hot line: 410-962-5684. The hotel will screen incoming calls, but you are free to dial out, say Cuban officials.

But you face barriers, too. Your floors at the Sheraton will be sealed off from the rest of the hotel, says city police Col. Bert Shirey. That will protect you from anyone who might wish to harass you or do you harm, but it also will make it harder for you to find Joe Cubas or any other sports agent.

Cuban security arrived in town nearly three weeks ago. Accompanied by local authorities, they inspected every location at which you'll spend time. "We spent several days and nights with this Cuban group looking at sites," says Shirey. "Their main concern was the security of their party. This experience is unique for them and for us."

Take, for example, your workout tonight at Camden Yards. Cuban officials have requested that the windows on the stadium side of the B&O; Warehouse be blocked so that outsiders cannot observe the team from a distance.

The Orioles' reception for you is invitation-only, says club chief operating officer Joe Foss. And during tomorrow night's game, two rows of Cuban officials will be sitting directly behind your dugout. Nowhere in your schedule is there time to talk with the public or sign autographs.

"That kind of contact won't be possible," says Fernandez of the Cuban Interests Section. "It's only a two-day visit. They will need all the time for rest, practice and the game."

The lure of Cuba

Or maybe you let this opportunity go by, for a reason Americans may find hard to understand: You like where you are.

You play for the national team and get to see the baseball playing world. And since the Cuban government began lending veteran players to professional leagues around the world in 1997, you have the opportunity for a lucrative second career. The catch is that the government keeps 80 percent of your salary and uses it to fund the country's sports programs.

"The way the Cubans think of it is that out of the 400 or so players who are the top level, only 30 have left, so 370 didn't want to go," says Scott Armstrong, a writer who has played a behind-the-scenes role in making the games happen between the Cubans and Orioles. "These are players who are treated better than others in their own society. And they have been told, I think, that to defect at this game, of all games, would be the ultimate treason."

There are plenty of reasons to stay, Armstrong points out. "Some players like Castro. Others see through him, but appreciate what he has done for them and their families," he says. Jumping in Baltimore means leaving behind your family in a place where there are no guarantees you'll ever see them again.

Even if you are thinking about defecting, you take the chance that Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke are right, that this game could help to improve relations between the two countries, and that at a time not too distant, America's major leagues could open up to you.

"I think one thing that may stop defections is if the players believe things are changing," says Luis Ortega, a second baseman during college in Cuba who is now, 40 years later, executive director of Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening's commission on Hispanic affairs. "Maybe this is like Nixon's ping-pong diplomacy with China, and we will see a difference."

Cuban officials are stoking those hopes. "I hope this is not the last event," says Fernandez. "Why not have a real World Series, with teams from Cuba and all over the world? And if baseball is possible, why not more exchanges, with economists and scientists?"

And maybe you will stick it out because, as Fernandez suggests, you love your country, and because stubbornness is part of what it means to be Cuban.

Jose Herrera, a retired Cuban-American chemist in Howard County, tells an old story about an American man and a Cuban man catching crabs together. The American fellow puts the crabs he gets in a cage and quickly closes the top, just as a crab tries to escape. But the Cuban puts his crabs in a container but keeps the top open. They don't budge.

"Why don't they move?" asks the American.

"Because they are Cuban crabs," is the answer.

You're Cuban, too.

You have one minute, and 25 feet, to yourself.

Here comes the pitch.

Sun staff writers Peter Schmuck and Mark Matthews contributed to this article.

Pub Date: 5/02/99