By Frances Kerry
HAVANA, Oct 21 (Reuters) - They share a passion for baseball and they're near neighbors.
But the divide between communist Cuba and the United States was summed up this week in the fortunes of a highly-paid 22-year-old baseball player who defected, and the mother he left behind.
Florida Marlins pitcher Livan Hernandez, who defected from a Cuban training camp in Mexico in 1995, on Saturday became the youngest pitcher to win a World Series game in the Marlins' 7-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians.
U.S. authorities said on Monday they had granted a visa for his mother, Miriam Carreras, to visit her son.
But Tuesday, it was not known if she would receive the required exit permit from Cuban authorities.
Carreras lives in the Isle of Youth, a small island south of the main island of Cuba. She traveled to Havana on Monday, friends said, but it was not possible to contact her at the house she normally stays at when she visits the Cuban capital.
Officials at the Cuban Foreign Ministry and at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana were not immediately available for comment on whether or not she had permission to travel.
Exit permits are required for all residents of Cuba to leave the island. It would be unusual for the Cuban authorities to grant such permission for travel by a family member of someone seen by the government as a traitor.
State media have made no mention of the weekend feat by Livan Hernandez, who was also voted most valuable player of the U.S. National League Championship this season.
President Fidel Castro's government views sports stars who defect as having betrayed the country, saying they have used the socialist system to hone their skills, only to be lured away from their country by the promises of riches.
It must take a steel nerve to stay patriotic.
Livan Hernandez is on a four-year $4.5 million contract. A star player in Cuba, like Omar Linares, earns about $10 a month in pesos and hard currency bonuses which may amount to several hundred dollars a year.
Banned from earning even that small amount from baseball is Livan Hernandez's half-brother, one of the best pitchers in Cuban history. Known to all Cubans as The Duke, Orlando Hernandez was accused of seeking to defect last year and suspended from baseball for life.
Warmly enthusiastic about his brother's success, Orlando Hernandez, 28, notched up a career record of 129 wins to 47 defeats and played in the national squad for nearly a decade.
He now works as a sports instructor at Havana's psychiatric hospital, earning 200 pesos a month, about $10.
But he still trains hard and says if he were allowed to play baseball again, he could rejoin the national squad very quickly. He says he never planned to defect, just met a person who brought him some packages from his half-brother.
Two other players were also banned for life. Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, was accused of planning their defections and is serving a 15-year jail sentence for seeking to assist illegal exits.
Orlando Hernandez told Reuters on Tuesday he was very pleased that Livan's mother had been granted a U.S. visa and hoped she would soon be able to see her son.
"It's very good this decision, she deserves it since she's Livan's mother, she's a mother, she's suffering and at the same time she's enjoying his victories.''
Cubans have been making preparations to follow Livan Hernandez's fortunes in the third World Series match by tuning into Spanish-language Florida radio stations.
Some enterprising Cubans have rigged up antennas to pick up the signal from a cable service of foreign television channels that is sold to foreigners in Cuba.
"Tickets'' to see a televised Marlins match in a private home with an antenna are currently $2 each, said one Havana resident, adding ruefully: "Not that I can afford that.''
22:33 10-21-97