In Cuba, diamond diplomacy

[Jimmy2]

HAVANA - They burst into the hush of the four-star Hotel Telegrafo like old friends into a neighborhood pub, wearing baseball pants and slapping one another on the back. Shoving together white-linened tables, they beckoned waiters to bring cans of cold beer and seafood salads.

The group of aging amateur softball players - half of them Cuban residents, half visitors from Massachusetts - had met just a few hours before, standing nervously along the base lines of a children’s baseball field flanked by palm trees while a band played “El Himno de Bayamo’’ and “The Star Spangled Banner.’’ Separated by language and culture and a half-century political divide, at first they had hardly known what to make of one another.

But by the time they got to lunch, guys like Gary Buxton, a cigar-chomping insurance appraiser from Holliston, and Les Gore, a retired corporate recruiter from Newton, were trading barbs - through an interpreter - with Cubans like 57-year-old Sixto Elias Coury del Castillo.

“It’s a beautiful thing,’’ said Armando Aguiar Gil, 60, a former coach of Cuba’s national softball team. “Sports is a way of uniting people, and this could be the beginning of something, a step toward something good for the people of Cuba. You can feel it.’’

This is “softball diplomacy,’’ as players put it during the Old Time Senior Softball Tournament last week between teams of seniors from Massachusetts and their counterparts in Cuba. And it seemed, in some small way, to work: A week ago, some 60 players from the state boarded planes for Havana, many of them knowing little, if any, Spanish or much about the country for which they were bound. But after a few games, they experienced a surprisingly powerful common bond with the Cuban players: a simple love of the game.

“Sometimes little things can turn into big things,’’ said Michael Eizenberg, a softball player from Wellesley who conceived the tournament, then spent months securing permission for it. “Especially when big things seem impossible.’’

Amateur US teams have occasionally come to Cuba, seeking to strengthen ties between the two nations through a shared affinity for sports, particularly baseball and softball. But now is a particularly poignant time, as the Obama administration adopts a more conciliatory tone toward Cuba’s communist dictatorship and Congress considers an end to heavy restrictions on US travel.

The Cuban players and their fans said they were delighted by the visit, and made it clear they do not share their government’s antipathy toward the United States.

“The people have nothing to do with the government,’’ said Luis Zayas Travieso, 72. “We, the people, are open.’’

Travieso, who played baseball in Mexico with the Cuban-born star Luis Tiant in the 1950s, wore a Boston Red Sox cap and quickly spotted Nelson Diaz, a longtime friend he hadn’t seen in years. Diaz, 50, a Miami resident in Cuba to visit family, had heard about the tournament and came to cheer.

“Put politics aside and let the people be,’’ he said. “After 50 years, it’s time to try something else. Closing Cuba off to the world, that hasn’t worked.’’

Diaz, who left Cuba in a 1980 exodus known as the Mariel Boatlift, said that for the past eight years he was allowed to see his family in Cuba only once every three years. But under relaxed travel policies instituted recently, he has already made three visits this year.

The Massachusetts league received a license to compete in Cuba from the US Treasury Department, which last year approved 21 exchanges with the island nation for public performances and competitions. When Eizenberg and league commissioner Stu Gray told the 350 players in the Eastern Massachusetts Senior Softball Association about the opportunity, four team rosters immediately filled up.

“Chance of a lifetime,’’ said Wally Introne, a Hull resident with thick glasses and a thicker mustache who plays in six softball leagues. “I basically quit work to play softball. Priorities.’’

The players, who were scheduled to play 28 games against their Cuban counterparts, range in age from their late 50s to well over 70, and vary considerably in athletic prowess.

In the stands, the fans were kind, cheering good efforts on both sides. In the first game, pitting the top squads from each country, the Americans won easily behind Gray’s expert, high-arc pitches and a barrage of home runs that kept the children working the manual scoreboard in center field busy.

The Cubans, accustomed to a different style of play with faster pitching, struggled to adjust. The second game was more competitive, but the Americans again prevailed comfortably. Across town, the Cubans evened the score by winning two games.

The final scores, however, seemed secondary. George Chan sprinkled dirt from his home field in Wayland on the pitcher’s mound, then refilled the vial as a memento. Players who remembered the fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 marveled at their surroundings.

When an American player slipped while rounding second base, two Cuban players rushed to help him up. Both sides chuckled when an American hit rolled under the glove of the Cuban first baseman, then the right fielder’s as well.

After the game, the players clasped hands; some embraced. Later, at lunch at the Telegrafo, the Cubans vowed they would take the next day’s game, promising to practice all night, and to send young women with strong drinks to the Americans’ rooms to keep them up late. But then they turned serious, and called the Americans friends.

“God willing, we will be able to visit them someday,’’ del Castillo said.