Imagine world where baseball is played just for the fun of it. A place where world-class players walk or ride their bikes to the ballpark and know the fans by their first names. A place where some of the best baseball in the world is played, with no luxury boxes, no owners, no MasterCard commercials and, above all, no labor conflicts. Such place exists in Cuba, only ninety miles off the U.S. coast, where many of the world's best players play baseball not for money or fame, but for the love of their country and the game itself. It is place where baseball has been played for nearly 150 years, and where the great ball games of years past still inhabit the country's collective memory. It has played host to Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige and Cal Ripken and has also produced the likes of Martin Dihigo and Omar Linares, equally great players whose feats are little known outside of this 720-mile-long island. The best place in Cuba to discuss baseball is the esquina caliente, or hot corner, located in Havana park just across the street from the capitol building. There, under statue of national patriarch Jose Marti, dozens of men congregate daily to argue about both Cuban and American baseball. Some are members of the Pena, national association of diehard baseball fans, but most are simply casual fans coming and going as the day unfolds. Many have followed baseball since before the Revolution, when such players as Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth spent their off-seasons playing winter ball on the island. Among these elder statesmen is Marcelo Sanchez, one of four Cuban members of the Society for American Baseball Research, who proudly displays his SABR membership card for anyone who asks. On this day he is arguing with fellow fan about whether Dizzy Dean or Sandy Koufax was better pitcher. They are shouting in order to hear each other over the dozens of other animated baseball conversations taking place. Fue loco--he was crazy--Sanchez says of Dean, and that ends this particular argument. Koufax wins. Sanchez now moves on to the next issue at hand, this time speculating on how Orestes Kindelan, the Cuban League's lifetime home run leader, might fare in the Major Leagues. This and dozen other frantic conversations continue past sundown, surreal symphony of shouting about the national game. Baseball is virtually the only aspect of U.S. culture embraced by the Cuban Revolution, an enterprise based largely on resisting American imperialism. While the sport has long been an indispensable part of both cultures, its meaning in Cuba has changed profoundly since the onset of Fidel Castro's government. Communist ideals dictate that many of the aspects most Americans find distasteful about baseball--agents, high salaries, labor conflicts, team owners and, above all, greed--no longer exist in Cuban baseball. The ballparks are named after national heroes, not multinational corporations. To Cubans baseball is not business. It is passion, and it is run by the government not as money-making enterprise, but as public service. Things have not always been this way, of course. Before the 1959 Revolution, thriving professional winter league played host to Major League players looking for good times, warm weather, and little extra income. Because it was integrated long before the majors, the Cuban League also attracted Negro Leaguers trying to escape the racism of the United States. Cuban baseball in its current form began in 1962, when the government disbanded the professional league. In Communist society professional sports represented, as the December 1969 issue of Cuba magazine put it, a form of the exploitation of man by man: Athletes were sold and traded like simple merchandise (p. 17). Taking the place of professionalism was purely amateur league, called the National Series, which increased the number of teams and took baseball to the rural provinces that had previously been neglected. …