The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cuban national baseball team 3-2 Sunday afternoon. In Havana. Cuba. Home of all that is wrong with the Western Hemisphere.

Yeah, right. The biggest argument against the game was that it might bring closer ties between the U.S. and Cuba. An argument against? Jeez. That sounds like a great idea to me.

Yes, Fidel Castro is a dictator. A guy who believes in freedom of speech for himself and no one else (his speeches timing out at an average of four hours per). He's not a nice guy. I'm not gonna defend his actions of the last 25 years, though I will say that the revolution was a great idea.

It's just that I've seen a chunk of the anti-Castro league in action. On the streets of Tampa after the "Friends to the Rescue" pilot got shot down. In a university auditorium, baseball bats in hand, daring anyone to even suggest that we ought to deal with Castro instead of freeze him out. There aren't nice people either. In fact, they're worse than Castro. They want to return Cuba to the way it was before the revolution, when Batista ruled with an iron fist and the majority of the people were treated like chattel.

I have no use for the anti-Castro nuts. As for the congress, the one dude most opposed to any movement on the Cuba question is Jesse Helms. 'Nuff sed. There aren't many folks I wouldn't mind seeing in the obit page, but he's one.

They played a game today. A baseball game. That's all. Was this like ping-pong in China and wrestling in Iran? I hope so, because the only way the Cuban people can improve their lot is through a better relationship with the U.S. We're the big dog in the Caribbean, and no one wants to mess with us. Even the Europeans play softball when it comes to Cuban trade.

So why are we so afraid of such a minuscule threat? Castro is a communist, sure, but so was Boris Yeltsin. We like Boris, to the point of fearing what will happen when he finally croaks. But there are plenty of folks (and not just the old rich Cuban exiles who want to return to the days of serfs and lords on the island) who wake up in the middle of the night in sweats, dreading the inevitable Cuban invasion. Remember Red Dawn? What a howler.

Come on, Castro's a tin horn. He's not important. Not to you. Not to me. Not even to the regular Cuban. Oh, sure, there's pictures everywhere, and the old folks still worship him for the revolution (kinda like the way our old folks revere the democratic party in fond memory of FDR). But he's not a force in their everyday lives. And he's gonna die soon. We ought to be on better terms with the Cuban people, so that when the bearded one goes, we might be able to convince whoever is next in line to possibly, maybe hold democratic elections.

And so, a baseball game. We won (which, geopolitically, is not as good as our wonderfully strategic 2-1 loss to Iran in the World Cup), and the Cubans are gonna be in Baltimore later this year for the flip side. A couple players might even defect (we got a pool on that in the office). But come on. Cubans are people, nice people for the most part. Their leader is a bit out of it, but hell, our big guy hasn't exactly had a good couple years, either. Gosh, we all love baseball, and our supreme love gods, I mean leaders, aren't exactly reeking with respect. Next thing you know, a full-blown mutal-respect thing will explode.

Now I'm getting silly, just like all the whining about the game. It's just a game, folks, a game where one guy throws the ball, another swings at it (or not), and a whole bunch of other guys run around chaotically. Some dude in glasses (always in glasses, most often with a visor) keeps score, and the boys in blue keep order.

Maybe there is more to this metaphor than I thought.

Jon Worley spent Sunday watching Venus beat Serena, the O's beat Cuba and Purdue beat Duke.