Fans of both fair play and baseball doubtlessly cheered recent news that the Baltimore Orioles may play an exhibition game in Havana and the Cubans another in Camden Yards.

The world is crazy enough without harsh laws against guys playing ball.

But, sadly, for nearly 40 years U.S. law and policy have staunchly opposed such sport -- at least if a ballplayer rented a hotel room, paid for a meal or bought a paper on the way to the park.

Why, they'd be "trading with the enemy," as the U.S. law against spending a cent in Cuba is named. (Perversely, traveling to the island is legal for any American ... as long as they don^Òt leave even a penny behind.)

In fact, despite full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Washington still has none with Havana.

The roots of that silliness lie in a far larger and sharper game of days gone by, the Cold War. Back then Americans were scouring the country for communists, building bomb shelters, and making schoolchildren practice crouching under desks in case the nukes started flying.

In the midst of that grand conflict, Washington didn't take kindly to a country ninety miles away nationalizing all the American businesses, declaring itself socialist -- and taking out an insurance policy with nuclear-tipped missiles. Nor was Cuban support for revolutionaries throughout Latin America a big hit.

On the other side, Cubans didn't appreciate U.S. support for a dictator whose favored torture was gouging out his opponents' eyes, nor decades of being told how to run their own country.

As the contest unfolded, it only got nastier. Washington wielded assassination attempts, military invasion and bacteriological warfare, while Havana pumped guns to Latin American rebels and tried to rally the Third World to cancel their billions owned to Western banks.

But the collapse of the Soviet Bloc--ironically, the end of the Cold War--left Cuba with nothing: no trading partners, no fuel oil, no food, and no currency to buy anything in the world market.

Hungry Cubans tightened their belts at least three notches. The island's economy plummeted so deeply into the economic abyss that, by comparison, the Great Depression looked like a little turbulence.

There was little doubt anywhere that Cuba's revolution was history.

But today it still stands -- and celebrates its fortieth anniversary. They've swallowed their pride and embraced tourism, foreign capitalist investment, and the use of the American dollar as virtually their national currency.

Meanwhile, U.S. stocks began their surge toward record levels, and all talk was of free markets as Washington emerged as the world's undisputed super- power.

Still Havana stubbornly insists it's right. Forget our relative poverty, said Cuba's leaders, we have full employment here -- plus rates of literacy, life expectancy, and suppression of infant mortality equal to the richest country in the world.

And Havana still embraces--with apparent quixotic fervor--the notion that it^Òs world capitalism, not socialism, that is about to collapse. Economic collapse in Asia, Russia and now Brazil prove it, they say.

As for the record levels on Wall Street,they simply show "the world has turned into a gigantic casino where wealth has nothing to do with value," as Fidel declared at the fortieth anniversary celebration. "This society is doomed."

But however unbending their insistence on revoultionary truth, to their credit Cuba's leaders are

But while the U.S. appeared to have triumphed overwhelmingly in the Cold War, the old total embargo on Cuba--and the refusal to extend diplomatic recognition--remained in place.

And so things stand today.

Or at least they did until the new year and its chance for baseball teams from Baltimore and Cuba to play a couple of games.

Yet now comes news that the U.S. is balking at Cuba sending their share of the take at Camden Yards to Central American victims of Hurricane Mitch. Seems they don't want a dime to pass through the hands of the government in Havana -- after all, diplomatically they don't exist as far as Washington's concerned.

Isn't it time to drop all this silliness and start a new game? Of course by rights Washington should start by recognizing the existence of the other side.

But at least let the Orioles and the what--Reds?--go nine innings a couple times. Heck, allow U.S. companies show their stuff by letting them do business there. And let Americans go see just what the opposition has.

What could be easier than that?

Come on guys -- let's play a little ball.

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