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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This story appears in the March 21, 2016 issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. TO subscribe to the magazine, click here.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If he were just some thrill-seeking tourist named Barry who wandered into Havana\u2019s Estadio Latinoamericano, President Obama would get a full-blast feel for the tattered, drum-pounding glory that is Cuba\u2019s national pastime. \u201CIt\u2019s an entirely different experience playing baseball there than in the United States,\u201D says former major league pitcher Jim Abbott. \u201CThe intensity of the crowd, the dancing, the music: Bryce Harper would love&amp;nbsp;it.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But because next week he\u2019ll become the first U.S. president to set foot in Cuba since Calvin Coolidge, because he\u2019ll be there to promote his 16-month-old initiative to open relations with the Castro-ruled nation and because a ballpark provides the most obvious patch of common ground for Americans and Cubans, Obama\u2019s experience can\u2019t help but be watered down. There will be ceremony and posturing when he shows up for the Rays\u2019 March&amp;nbsp;22 exhibition vs. the Cuban national team. Smothering security, minutely dissected handshakes, thousands of dull, carefully vetted \u201Cfans\u201D: It is ever thus, when high-level pols belly up to the USA-Cuba baseball rivalry. Everyone behaves according to plan.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, the unexpected happened only once, when baseball realized the barrier-breaking potential of \u201CPing-Pong diplomacy,\u201D when the game\u2019s ability to blow past terms like &lt;em&gt;missile crisis&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Bay of Pigs&lt;/em&gt; revealed itself like a sudden, breaching whale. For good reason. Jim Abbott was one of a kind,&amp;nbsp;too.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was July&amp;nbsp;1987, one month after Ronald Reagan called for the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin&amp;nbsp;Wall. Down 0\u20132 in a five-game tour of Cuba, Team&amp;nbsp;USA sent Abbott to the Latinoamericano mound for Game&amp;nbsp;3. Born without a right hand, the University of Michigan sophomore, on his first trip abroad, had been an obsession on the island from the moment he landed. Cubans stared and cheered each time he took the field. Now, when he was introduced, 50,000 Cubans rose for a standing ovation.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI\u2019d never felt like a star like that,\u201D Abbott says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then Victor (El&amp;nbsp;Loco) Mesa, the antic, mouthy centerfielder, led off with a tricky grounder to the third base side of the mound. Abbott trapped the ball between glove and hand, fired to first for the out, \u201Cand the place just went crazy\u2014jumping up and down, giving Mesa a hard time as he went back to the dugout,\u201D Abbott says. \u201CFrom then on, it just seemed like they were on my side.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;With Fidel Castro watching from the stands, Abbott gave up three hits in five-plus innings and earned every bit of the 8\u20133 win. When he and coach Ron Fraser tried to reach the team bus after the game, they were swarmed by shouting, grinning Cuban faces\u2014all taught from birth to resent Yanqui might. Abbott had played before sympathetic crowds in the U.S., but not like this. \u201CA kid like you, one hand, would never even have the chance to play in Cuba\u2019s national program,\u201D his interpreter explained. Says Abbott, \u201CIt was one of the moments I cherish.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It didn\u2019t stop there. Two years later, during Abbott\u2019s rookie season with the Angels, a request made its way to the clubhouse: Fidel wanted his autograph.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u2022 Subscribe to get the best of &lt;em&gt;Sports Illustrated &lt;/em&gt;delivered right to your inbox&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I first traveled to the island in 1991, not once did a native ask about Havana-born Jose Canseco, then the island\u2019s most famous export. But for the next decade, even as his career faded up north, they all spoke of Abbott with&amp;nbsp;awe.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the president who opened diplomatic relations with Cuba and called for an end to the U.S.\u2019s 55-year-old trade embargo, Obama will inspire similar reverence. His trip to Havana signals a new era, even as the regime\u2019s human-rights abuses continue and upgrades in daily life for Cubans come slowly. Yes, new embassies, relaxed travel rules and baseball games mean progress, but the embargo still largely forbids U.S. citizens from doing business in Cuba\u2014and only an act of Congress can reverse it.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Major League Baseball, meanwhile, has been exploring new policies toward Cuban players\u2014if only to prevent trafficking abuses\u2014and has made proposals to the Treasury Department office charged with enforcing the embargo. But with fears over the sustainability of the Cuban league and the regime\u2019s insistence on a cut of player contracts, not to mention MLB\u2019s looming contract negotiations with the Players Association, a resolution that provides a direct, hazard-free Cuba-U.S. pipeline is hardly imminent.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHopefully it\u2019s a 2016 thing,\u201D says Dan Halem, Major League Baseball\u2019s chief legal officer. \u201CIt\u2019s not going to be soon, even if there\u2019s dual-track negotiations with everyone.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But it will happen. Obama\u2019s day at the ballpark figures to be the most dramatic step yet in the long, tortured run toward normalization, but not the last. Abbott, the one American to beat Cubans at their own game and make them love it, has never returned. \u201CI\u2019m glad to see good things happen between our two countries,\u201D he says. \u201CWho knows? Maybe someday I\u2019ll be able to get back there to say hi. That would be kind of cool.\u201D&amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;S.L. Price is an SI senior writer and the author or the book &lt;/em&gt;Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey Into the Heart of Cuban Sports&lt;em&gt;. To purchase a copy, click here.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/03/22/cuba-united-states-barack-obama-rays>