May 5, 1999
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, May 4 (Reuters) - Hailing Cuba's baseball team as sporting ``lions,'' communist leader Fidel Castro led a euphoric national welcome on Tuesday for the players returning from their historic triumph against a U.S. Major League team.
But the Caribbean island's baseball party took a distinctly political turn as Castro gave a rousing, three-hour speech under the midday sun to thousands gathered at a victory rally on the steps of Havana University.
Players dedicated the victory to ``our dear Commander-in- Chief.'' Senior Communist Party leaders at the rally said the victory over the Baltimore Orioles was evidence of the strength of Castro's socialist state and ``revolutionary'' sports system.
Without pausing, sitting or even taking a sip of water -- as several of his younger listeners fainted in the heat -- the 72-year-old Castro ranged from Baltimore to Kosovo in a speech intended as a tribute to Cuba's all-star team.
``Despite our differences with them (the United States), this has been an historic event for many reasons,'' a buoyant Castro, dressed in his trademark olive-green military fatigues, told the crowd in his first public speech since the Jan. 1 celebration of 40 years since his 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Recounting the Orioles game and arrangements for it in minute detail, he railed against the evils of high-paid professional sport and praised amateurism.
Castro did not refer to the defection by at least one member of the Cuban baseball delegation in the United States, though he pointedly praised the returning team for avoiding materialistic temptations, and slammed the ``bandit'' sports scouts who seek to ``buy'' foreign players.
``The chief glory of these athletes is that they are athletes who do not sell themselves,'' Castro told the crowd.
Castro went on to touch on numerous other subjects ranging from the U.S. embargo against Havana to Cuba's social policies and his disgust for NATO's ``genocide'' against Yugoslavia.
On the Kosovo issue, Castro said he felt solidarity with all the victims in the conflict, and offered to send 1,000 Cuban doctors to treat refugees from the crisis.
Cuba's 12-6 thrashing of the Baltimore Orioles Monday night evened a two-game exhibition series unprecedented in 40 years of bitter relations between Washington and Havana.
In street scenes not seen since Pope John Paul II's January 1998 visit to Cuba, tens of thousands of cheering and flag- waving fans turned out to welcome the team early on Tuesday.
Waving deliriously, the players rode in a victory caravan of open-top jeeps, from Jose Marti international airport to the University of Havana, where a sea of Cubans packed the wide streets in front of the building's main steps.
Anti-Castro factions, particularly among the Cuban-American community in Florida, charged that the series was a propaganda coup for a man they label a dictator and tyrant.
The massive but well-controlled turnout for the Havana celebration was in part due to a formal mobilisation overnight by Cuba's Communist Party that Castro himself praised as ``a formidable machine.''
Asked about protests against his government at the Orioles' stadium, including an incursion by a demonstrator who was stopped by a Cuban umpire, Castro said, ``They acted very aggressively ... those people went there to provoke.''
Earlier, Cubans had celebrated into the early hours in homes across the island. Victory was all the sweeter for Cubans because it followed a 3-2 defeat by the Orioles in Havana on March 28 in the first game of the two-game exhibition series.
From the first pitch in Baltimore, Havana's streets were deserted as families and friends gathered around television sets. Cheers and whistles could be heard across the city every time Cuba notched a run.
Cuba's most popular baseball player Omar ``The Kid'' Linares told Castro at the celebration outside Havana University the team was proud to have carried out his ``mission'' and dedicated the triumph to ``you, comrade Fidel ... who synthesize the most noble aspirations of our people.''
Cars buzzed round Havana in the afternoon, with loudspeakers blaring: ``Long live Fidel! Fatherland or death!''
Sources said the Cuban team members had been given a free week at the beach with their families.
18:03 05-04-99
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited
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