A Cuban pitcher will wind up and deliver to an American batter Sunday in a ballpark in Havana to start an exhibition baseball game that carries the weight of history and stirs the passions of people in both nations.

The Baltimore Orioles face a team of Cuban all-stars in the first appearance of major-league baseball in Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power 40 years ago. It's a moment that, for some, recalls the time when the United States and Cuba played ball together in harmony. Tony Perez, a Camaguey native, is among them.

``People were crazy about baseball when I was growing up,'' said Perez, a Marlins front-office official, best known for his 23-year major-league career, including World Series titles in Cincinnati in 1975 and '76. ``We followed the majors closely through the newspapers and by watching the Game of the Week on television. I heard and read about Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Stan Musial and others all the time. Baseball was our No. 1 sport.''

The games between the Orioles and the Cuban teams will be an opportunity to gauge just how good current Cuban players are. Major-leaguers knew well the high quality of Cuban ball from decades of pre-Castro exhibitions and participation in the winter league.

After his Red Sox lost to a Cuban amateur team in 1941, Boston manager and Hall of Famer Joe Cronin said, ``They may be amateurs, but many are better than our players.''

He wasn't the first to figure that out.

A group of major-leaguers visited Cuba for a series of exhibitions after the 1921 season, and one big, moon-faced, spindly-legged American outfielder had a hard time against a Cuban pitcher named Jose Mendez, striking out three times.

In contrast, a Cuban hitter named Cristobal Torriente feasted on U.S. pitching, hitting three home runs.

The American outfielder was impressed.

``Tell Torriente and Mendez that if they could play with me in the major leagues, we would win the pennant by July and go fishing for the rest of the season,'' Babe Ruth said at the time.

Emotional reactions

The U.S. government and Major League Baseball have permitted today's game -- and the Orioles invitation to the Cubans for May 3 -- as a gesture of goodwill to the Cuban people. But the games have provoked strong emotions in both countries.

Cuban fans, long deprived of news of the major leagues by a Castro-mandated media blackout, were eagerly awaiting the return of big-league baseball after a four-decade absence. But many Cubans in the United States, including major-league players and former players, are opposed.

And the protests go beyond the exile community. Los Angeles Dodgers vice president and former manager Tommy Lasorda isn't Cuban, but he did play ball in Cuba through much of the 1950s. He loves the island and its people but is strongly against the Orioles' visit.

``I have many, many Cuban friends in Miami, people who were persecuted and stripped of their property and wealth by Castro,'' Lasorda said. ``I don't want to play baseball over there against the wishes of these people. I also don't want to play over there as long as Castro has the sanction against letting his players come here to play in the United States. I was asked to give clinics in Cuba, and I refused.''

An imported sport

It's believed that the first game in Cuba took place in June 1866, when sailors from a U.S. ship taking on sugar invited Cuban longshoremen to play. Two years later, El Club Habana was formed and beat a team from Matanzas in the first organized game between Cuban teams.

Two years after that, a small professional league was formed, and the game took off in popularity with the growth of summer and winter leagues in which many major-leaguers and future major-leaguers played. Cuba was a baseball melting pot, where blacks and whites played together long before Jackie Robinson integrated professional baseball in the United States in 1947.

The year 1911 brought one ferociously aggressive American, the premier base runner of his time, on a barnstorming tour through Havana. The runner tried to steal second base but was gunned out by a Cuban catcher named Gervasio ``Strike'' Gonzalez. Embarrassed and angry, the U.S. player said the base path between first and second was too long and demanded that it be measured.

It was measured and found to be three inches too long. But the call stood. The runner, Ty Cobb, was still out.

Plentiful talent

Judging by the way Cuban teams have dominated international amateur competition over the years, the talent level on the island is still formidable. Therefore, it's hardly a stretch to say a number of the current Cuban players could probably be in the major leagues if Castro permitted them to leave.

But he hasn't and there's no sign he will soon, leaving defection, with all its risks and painful partings, the only way out. Some have dared and a few succeeded in spectacular fashion, most notably the Hernandez pitching brothers -- Orlando ``El Duque,'' now with the Yankees, and Livan, with the Marlins.

Lasorda has vivid and warm memories of baseball in Cuba.

``It was baseball at its best,'' he said. ``The Cuban players were outstanding -- many who played winter ball were in the major leagues. And the fans were the greatest you'd ever hope to see. They loved the game, they knew the game and they were fiercely loyal to their teams. They all dressed for the game in the colors of their team and rooted like crazy. But they never went too far, never got out of hand, never threw things.''

Lasorda recalled that the island's biggest rivalry was between Almendares and Havana. ``It was said that if a father was an Almendares fan and his son liked Havana, the father would kick the son out of the house,'' Lasorda said. ``I heard dozens of stories like that. I mean those fans were passionate.''

Teams in minor leagues

Cuba was part of American organized ball for 14 years, with teams in two minor leagues composed largely of home-grown players. Owned by Roberto Maduro and affiliated with the now defunct Washington Senators, the Havana Cubans were members of the Florida International League from 1946 through 1953, winning four pennants and two league championships. Miami had a team in that league, the Sun Sox, and so did Miami Beach, the Flamingos, and the Cubans would visit both periodically.

But the Florida International League folded in 1954, and Maduro purchased a franchise in the Class AAA International League, naming the team the Havana Sugar Kings. A farm club for the Cincinnati Reds, the Sugar Kings also visited Miami to play the Marlins, a franchise that moved here from Syracuse in 1956.

The Sugar Kings won the International League championship, known as the Junior World Series, in 1959. That team was sparked by the outstanding pitching of Mike Cuellar, a native of Las Villas in Cuba, who would go on to win 20 games four times for the Orioles, and Luis Arroyo, a Puerto Rican who would star in relief for the famous Maris-and-Mantle 1961 Yankees.

Hailed as a patriarch of Cuban baseball, Maduro fled Castro-ruled Cuba and came to Miami, where he served as special assistant to then baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Maduro's stature was recognized in 1987 when the City Commission voted to change the name of Miami Stadium to Bobby Maduro Miami Stadium.

Not long after the Sugar Kings left Havana, baseball relations between the two countries were severed, denying Cuban players the chance to play in the United States.

Color barrier broken

It wasn't the first time they were prevented from fulfilling their baseball destiny.

Before Castro, the barrier was institutional racism. Until Robinson broke the color line, darker-skinned Cubans were not permitted to play in the major leagues, though they could and did play with distinction for teams such as the Cuban Stars and New York Cubans in the U.S. Negro League.

Robinson's breakthrough gave Cubans of all hues the opportunity they sought, and they took maximum advantage of it. By the late 1950s and early '60s, as many as 40 populated major-league rosters. Since there were only 16 teams in the majors until expansion in 1961, it meant that perhaps as many as 10 percent of all major-leaguers were Cuban. Stars such as Minnie Minoso, Bert Campaneris, Tony Oliva, Perez, Cuellar, Zoilo Versalles, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos and Luis Tiant earned Cuba the reputation as mother lode of the Caribbean for baseball talent.

A dwindling number of players of Cuban heritage remain in the majors today, including such standouts as Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Fernandez and Rolando Arrojo, but they either came to the United States at an early age or were born here of parents who fled the island. The pipeline is nearly empty, the inevitable result of a ban that has now lasted for decades.

Earlier era recalled

The games Sunday and May 3 serve as reminders of a time when baseball helped unite the United States and Cuba. Though he's hardly a fan of Castro, Oliva sees benefits to playing.

``These games will let Cubans see the best players in the world and let the world see how good Cubans are,'' said Oliva, a native of Pinar del Rio and a three-time American League batting champion who now serves as minor-league instructor for the Minnesota Twins. ``I've seen the Cubans play all over -- in Mexico, Canada and the Dominican Republic -- and there is a lot of talent there.

``I wish they had a chance to play professionally in the United States. I'm sure some could play in the major leagues. Will they get the chance? I don't know. It's God's will.''