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The USA and Sporting Diplomacy: Comparing and Contrasting the Cases of
Table Tennis with China and Baseball with Cuba in the 1970s
Thomas F. Carter and John Sugden
International Relations 2012 26: 101
DOI: 10.1177/0047117811411741

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411741 IREXXX10.1177/0047117811411741Carter and SugdenInternational Relations

Article

International Relations

The USA and Sporting

26(1) 101­–121
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
Diplomacy: Comparing co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0047117811411741
and Contrasting the ire.sagepub.com

Cases of Table Tennis

with China and Baseball
with Cuba in the 1970s

Thomas F. Carter and John Sugden

University of Brighton

Abstract
When Beijing hosted the Olympic Games in 2008 we were reminded that almost four decades
earlier the People’s Republic of China’s road back to international recognition and acceptance
had begun with a chance sporting encounter between two members of the US and Chinese table
tennis teams in Japan in 1971. It is less well known that not long after this successful ‘ping pong’
diplomatic episode, attempts were made by various parties to use baseball in a similar way to try
and repair international ties between Cuba and the United States. In this article the circumstances
through which the former succeeded whereas the latter failed miserably are subject to detailed
examination. Drawing upon existing literature and unclassified material gleaned from the National
Security Archive (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Archive we argue that for
a number of historically specific reasons, and because of the different balances of interest and
asymmetric power relations, ‘ping pong’ diplomacy was able to help broker rapprochement
between the United States and China, whereas ‘baseball diplomacy’ could do little or nothing to
stimulate diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.

Keywords
China, Cuba, international relations, sports diplomacy, United States

Corresponding author:
John Sugden, Chelsea School of Sport, University of Brighton, Denton Road, Eastbourne BN20 7SP, UK.
Email: j.sugden@bton.ac.uk

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102 International Relations 26(1)

Introduction
Although there is much said about sport in the context of diplomacy, little of this debate
has taken place in the International Relations literature. In what discourse does exist,
more often than not the positive value of sport as a broker of transnational good will is
taken as given, particularly in rhetorical statements emanating from sports organizations
or in sound-bites from vote-catching politicians.1 In contrast, a perusal of the historical
record reveals a mixed picture, with sport just as likely to feature in provoking new or
augmenting existing forms of international conflict.2
When considering the diplomatic power of sports, the vanguard role played by table
tennis in the thawing of diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s is the most often used example. However, it
is less well known that not long after the success of ‘ping pong diplomacy’ there were
concerted attempts to use baseball for similar purposes by those interested in engineering
rapprochement between the US and its much nearer island neighbour, Cuba. These
attempts at sporting diplomacy with Cuba failed miserably. Today China is (almost) a
fully integrated member of the international community, with formal diplomatic rela-
tions with the United States and all other Western powers. In terms of US foreign policy,
Cuba remains an American political pariah and marginal to European international
relations. Drawing upon existing literature and recently declassified documents from the
CIA Archives, in this paper we scrutinize the cases of both ‘ping pong’ and ‘baseball’
diplomacy in an attempt to identify the specific historical and contextual circumstances
by which the former initiative succeeded while the latter did not.

Ping pong diplomacy

The decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing represented the culmina-
tion of a process of sport-led diplomacy that began in April 1971, when the US Table
Tennis Federation accepted an invitation from its Chinese counterparts to play a
series of exhibition matches in the PRC. There can be little doubt that this moment
of ‘ping pong’ diplomacy represented a watershed in Sino−US relations. The
undoubted success of the ping pong initiative can only be fully understood in the
context of a complex interplay of transcending political, economic and strategic factors.
Formal diplomatic ties between mainland China and the West had been severed in
1949, when the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, the Red Army, led by
Mao Zedong, defeated the forces of the Nationalist government, the remnants of which
were forced into exile on the Island of Formosa (Taiwan) along with their leader
Chiang Kai-shek, where the Republic of China or ROC was formed. This provided
another dimension to the politics of international relations in a post-Second World War
period which was already dominated by growing frostiness in relations between the
United States (and its allies in the West) and the Soviet bloc in the East − the so-called
Cold War. The USSR had been a major backer of the Chinese Communists during the
Chinese civil war, while the United States sided with the Nationalists. With Mao’s victory
in mainland China, the United States naturally assumed that this represented a very
significant spread of Soviet influence and proof positive that the ultimate goal was a

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Carter and Sugden 103

Soviet-led, communist global hegemony. This persuaded the United States to continue
to back Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists’ claim for national sovereignty. It also
helped to fuel and frame the development of the ‘domino theory’ of international
relations – that communism could be spread through geographical proximity and
contagiousness.3 This assessment caused the United States to draw a line in the sand in
Indochina and led to US military advisors and ground troops being deployed in increas-
ing numbers throughout South-East Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in
Korea and Vietnam.
This rather simplistic view of a uniform and unified ‘Communist bloc’ built around
the USSR and China began to shift in the early 1960s as cracks appeared in the red
monolith. Ideologically, the PRC and its leadership were becoming increasingly
resistant to the notion that Moscow was the fulcrum and spiritual leader of the
communist movement. Mao accused the Soviet leadership of betraying the legacy of
‘Leninism−Stalinism’ with power and privilege concentrated in the hands of a ‘new
type of bureaucratic capitalist class’.4 In a series of anti-Soviet polemics, the USSR was
depicted by Mao as the harbinger of a new form of ‘social imperialism’ − something
that had to be resisted as much as American imperialism. The PRC sought to reposition
and reassert itself as a more virtuous communist state than the USSR and one better
placed to lead the quest for world domination.5 Undoubtedly, at least in part, this was
driven by Mao Zedong’s desire to promote himself globally as the chosen leader of
world communism and domestically to feed the cult of personality so characteristic of
his leadership.6
Washington listened with interest to the increasingly hostile rhetorical exchanges
between Moscow and Beijing as they began to sound less like ideological debates and
more like sabre rattling. Then, in 1969, a series of incursions and limited combat opera-
tions broke out along China’s disputed northern border with the Soviet Union. The pros-
pect of wholesale conflict between the two emerging and nuclear-equipped superpowers
began to seem increasingly possible. The response of the United States to something that
had the potential to trigger World War III was twofold. First, through both official and
unofficial diplomatic channels, the United States pledged to do everything in its power
to help prevent the conflict escalating further. Second, behind the scenes it worked
equally hard to exploit the situation to its best advantage. This is clearly evidenced in a
recently declassified briefing written by Allen S. Whiting, a senior intelligence officer
and veteran China watcher, for the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger:

The U.S. objectives therefore should be (1) to deter a Soviet attack on China, (2) to inhibit the
use of nuclear weapons in a Sino-Soviet War, and (3) to maximize the possibility of China
identifying Russia as its sole antagonist, in contrast with the rest of the world and particularly
with the United States.7

The threat of nuclear war notwithstanding, the incumbent US President Richard Nixon
and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, both saw huge advantages to be gained
through helping to drive a wedge between the USSR and the PRC. First, not long after the
Cuban missile crisis and at the high point of the Cold War, to be facing a disunited
communist adversary was quite an attractive prospect. Second, and most importantly, as

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104 International Relations 26(1)

the US body count began to mount, Nixon was committed to the development of a
strategy for disengaging from Vietnam.8 Along with his advisor Kissinger, Nixon believed
this could only be achieved through cooperation with the PRC which had been providing
considerable material and strategic support to Hanoi for the duration of this increasingly
bloody conflict. Public opinion in the United States had turned against the Nixon admin-
istration, largely because of stagnation in Vietnam.
In this context what both the United States and China needed was a relatively risk-free
pretext to begin to explore the possibilities for closer political, economic and military
relations. The unlikely mechanism for this arose during the 1971 World Table Tennis
Championships which took place in Nagoya, Japan. For the first time since the start of
Cultural Revolution in China – a period when many sports were suppressed and all inter-
national sporting contacts with the West were severed – the Chinese, who had dominated
world table tennis in previous years, agreed to send a representative team, with the bless-
ing of Mao Zedong.9 The United States had also sent a team and on 4 April a member of
that squad, Glenn Cowan, made history when he hitched a ride on the Chinese team’s bus
and struck up a conversation with the captain of the Chinese team, Zhuang Zedong, who
was then widely regarded as the best male table tennis player in the world. In defiance
of prevailing political taboos and national stereotypes, the two men found a common
bond in table tennis. When they got off the bus gifts were exchanged in front of waiting
press photographers, who had somehow been tipped off about the encounter.10
Photographs of Cowan and Zhuang soon sped around the world on the wires of Associated
Press and Agence France Presse, and from that moment relations between China and the
United States began a journey towards rapprochement.
What happened as a consequence of this dubiously serendipitous moment and in what
sequence is a little unclear. Some observers suggest that local American officials recog-
nized this ‘chance encounter’ as an opportunity to open up a dialogue with the Chinese,
and engineered an invitation to the PRC. Others believe the opposite and that it was the
Chinese, prodded from the wings by Chairman Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Chou
En-lai, who viewed this eventuality as something that could be exploited for their own
political ends.11 On seeing the smiling photograph of Zhuang Zedong and Glen Cowen,
Mao is reported to have referred to his namesake as ‘a good diplomat’ and after some
deliberation had ordered that the US team should be invited to China. Whichever side
made the first move, what is certain is that on 14 April, not much more that a week after
Cowan set foot on the Chinese bus, he made the short walk across a bridge from Hong
Kong to mainland China, together with eight teammates, two spouses, four officials and
ten journalists. They played several exhibition matches in which the far superior Chinese
team, in the spirit of ‘friendship first, competition second’,12 allowed the US team to win
at least some games. The delegation visited the Great Wall and were generally feted and
treated as honoured guests. As a sporting occasion this tour was very forgettable; as a
diplomatic intervention, however, it was anything but − opening what Chou En-lai later
was to refer to as a ‘new page’ in Sino-American relations.13
For the United States, the table tennis venture was viewed as a heaven-sent opportu-
nity, not only to help to isolate the USSR, but to help with the development of an exit
strategy from Vietnam, as well as giving the American public something to think about

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Carter and Sugden 105

other than body bags. The following brief extract from a recorded telephone conversation
between the President and his Secretary of State illustrates both points:

Kissinger: Exactly. For every reason we have got to have a diversion from Vietnam
in this country for a while.
Nixon: That’s the point isn’t it, yeah.
Kissinger: And we need it for our game with the Soviets.
Nixon: Yeah, yeah.
Kissinger: I mean it would be absolutely impossible, we would be doing the Soviets
the greatest favour if we rejected this overture and we would get nothing
for it, it would lead to tougher relations between us and the Soviets,
rather than easier.
Nixon: That’s right, that’s right. That’s what they would like for us to do, they
would like for us to sort of slap the Chinese in the face but we’re not
going to. We’re not going overboard but we’re saying well, if they open
the door, we’ll open the door.14

For their part the Chinese leadership had their own reasons to look favourably upon
opportunities for diplomatic rapprochement with the United States. Militarily, while
numerically superior, the Chinese armed forces were no match for their Soviet counter-
parts in terms of hardware and technological sophistication, and if full-scale war did
break out, they were fearful of being outgunned by the Russians. An alliance with the
United States would do much to deter Soviet aggression. Moreover, Mao craved access
to US military technology and was particularly interested in using this to help the
development of China’s nuclear arsenal. Also, outside of the military sphere, the Chinese
economy had been ravaged by years of war and by the failures and follies of the ‘Great
Leap Forward’ and the Cultural Revolution. An American-led trade embargo exacer-
bated economic underdevelopment and the Chinese were eager to see this relaxed.
Then there was the vexed question of Nationalist China. From his base in Taiwan,
Chiang Kai-shek still claimed to be the only legitimate ruler of China and that Nationalist
China was the only legitimate and sovereign state. Hitherto this status had been broadly
accepted by most Western powers and had been championed by the United States, who
were happy to do so as long as support for the PRC was believed to be counter to US
interests in the region. Up until now the United States had lobbied for Taiwan’s member-
ship of the United Nations to the exclusion of the PRC. Likewise it had been a strong
backer of Taiwan in its claim to be the only legitimate representative of China in the
Olympic movement.15
Of related concern for the PRC were the intentions of an older enemy, Japan, by
whom any Sino-US rapprochement was viewed with great suspicion.16 As it recovered
from the devastating impact of World War II, the Chinese were worried that Japan would
rediscover its expansionist tendencies. In a worst-case scenario, if things went badly
with the Soviets, the Chinese leadership believed it could end up fighting a war on two
fronts, with both Taiwan and Japan exploiting Chinese deployments to counter the
Soviets in the north and west to mount assaults in the east. The United States was viewed
by the Chinese as having a key role to play in containing any Japanese expansionist

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106 International Relations 26(1)

ambitions and influencing the status of Nationalist China in the eyes of the rest of the
world. This analysis was shared by the US intelligence community. In a briefing note for
the State Department, intelligence analyst Ray S. Cline spells out what he believed lay
behind the PRC’s sporting detente:

Peking’s most immediate consideration in adopting ‘people’s diplomacy’ toward the US is

presumably a belief that a show of reasonableness will fuel its current drive for international
recognition and improve prospects for allocation of the China seat in the United Nations to the
PRC in the fall … the impact on Moscow of PRC gestures to the US was obviously quite strong
last winter and the present steps must have been designed in part for their effects in both
Moscow and Tokyo. In addition, Peking presumably hopes that Taipei’s predictably anguished
reaction will contribute to the PRC’s longstanding – and strikingly unsuccessful – effort to
undermine morale on Taiwan and cause the Nationalist Government to collapse.17

The notion of ‘people’s diplomacy’ as expressed here is an important one. It is similar to

the concept of ‘track two diplomacy’ and refers to civil society initiatives that utilize
agents and activities without any formal political status in lieu of more formal political
and diplomatic developments.18 It was China’s way of making tentative steps towards
diplomatic and economic normalization with the rest of the world without initially run-
ning the risk of political failure. As Cline put it, ‘Peking will hope to win propaganda
benefits while avoiding the tough substantive issues which would inevitably arise in
governmental discussions or visits by high level US personages.’19 If, for whatever rea-
son, the ping pong initiative had led nowhere, then there would have been little political
fallout and, importantly, no loss of face by the Chinese leadership. This, of course,
worked both ways, and the United States likewise saw the table tennis tour as an oppor-
tunity to edge forward its emerging policy of rapprochement with China with limited
political risks.
Finally, we have to take account of the personal political agendas of Mao and Nixon.
In the case of Nixon, he faced an election in November 1972 against George McGovern,
an opponent who was avowedly anti-war. As we have seen, the Vietnam War had become
increasingly unpopular and anything that could be done to suggest that the Nixon admin-
istration was making progress towards disengagement would play well in the polls. In
Nixon’s own words, the ping pong initiative ‘opened a door’ which he was more than
happy to walk through if it would help him get US troops out of Vietnam, while at the
same time cocking a snook at the Soviets. Mao understood the needs of his former
adversary and was able to play him accordingly:

Glowing and fascinated reports littered the American and major Western Press day after day.
Mao the old newspaperman had hit exactly the right button. ‘Nixon’ wrote one commentator,
‘was truly amazed at how the story jumped off the sports pages and onto the front page’. With
one move, Mao had created the climate in which a visit to China would be a political asset in
the run up to the 1972 presidential election.20

After much ‘back-channel’ diplomacy, including a top-secret visit to China by Kissinger

in February 1972, Nixon became the first Western leader to make an official state visit to
the PRC. Not only did this pave the way for a whole raft of new political, economic and

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Carter and Sugden 107

military arrangements between the United States and the PRC (mostly in favour of the
PRC), it also hugely enhanced Mao’s standing both at home and abroad. For his part,
while Mao did not have to deal with the messy details of a democratic election, like
Nixon he was equally obsessed with power and the retention and enhancement of his
personal share of it. After Nixon’s visit, ‘Mao became not merely a credible international
figure, but one with incomparable allure. World statesmen beat a path to his door’,
massaging the former journalist’s considerable ego.21
While Mao, and to a slightly lesser extent Nixon, were the greatest beneficiaries of
ping pong diplomacy, undoubtedly it was Chiang Kai-shek and the ROC who were the
biggest losers. In October 1971 the ROC’s membership of the United Nations was
revoked and the PRC admitted in its place, also taking the ROC’s place as a permanent
member of the Security Council. Eight years later the PRC was admitted to the
International Olympic Committee (IOC), and while the ROC kept its membership, it was
forced to change its name to Chinese Taipei.22 As far as Nixon and Kissinger were con-
cerned, while constituting unfortunate ‘collateral damage’, the fate of Chiang Kai-shek
and the ROC could not be put before US interests in the region and the world at large.
Today the Soviet Union is a receding memory and Vietnam is a peaceful and inte-
grated member of the world order. The PRC is one of the world’s most powerful trading
economies, and while it has yet to embrace democracy and fully sign up to international
codes of human rights, it is a relatively open society and a far cry from the repressive era
of the Cultural Revolution. Highly symbolic of this journey, Beijing was selected by the
IOC to host the 2008 Olympic Games.23 It would be foolish to suggest that all this
happened because in 1971 a little-known American table tennis player was late for
his bus. Indeed as early as 1968 political elites in Beijing and Washington had begun
exploring and probing unofficial channels through which the United States and China
could be brought to the negotiating table.24 On the other hand, it would be equally foolish
to discount the contribution of ping pong diplomacy to the complex processes of detente
that have produced these conditions.

Baseball diplomacy
The remaining and really interesting question is why – with the same key principle
involved on the US side, i.e. Henry Kissinger − the table tennis initiative between China
and the United States paved the way for the restoration of diplomatic relations between
the two powers, whereas only a few years later attempts to achieve a similar rapproche-
ment between the United States and Cuba through baseball failed miserably. It is to this
question we now turn.
Since Cuba’s independence from Spain in 1898 up until the Revolution in 1959, the
political relations between the United States and Cuba, while never overtly hostile, had
been based on what can be loosely described as neo-colonialism.25 While the Cuban
passion for baseball was clearly affected by US clientelism, over time the sport became
a vehicle through which American domination could be resisted. Not long after the
Revolution, with Castro in power and Cuba being characterized as a communist enclave,
diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed. The American economic
embargo and Cuba’s ban on professional sport were part of a tit-for-tat exchange that

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108 International Relations 26(1)

completely ruptured the historic sporting ties between the two countries. Put simply,
each side refused to play ball with the other. These were the prevailing conditions when
the idea of a series of exhibition baseball encounters between Cuba and the United States
was first proposed in the early 1970s.
US−Cuba relations were fully influenced by the domestic political crises in the United
States during the early 1970s. Although the diplomatic courtship between the United
States and China described above came at the zenith of the Nixon−Kissinger partnership,
the move towards a possible sports exchange between Cuba and the United States came
as the Watergate crisis was coming to its calamitous end, and the disgraced President was
leaving the White House. Kissinger, however, remained in place in a new administration
under Gerald Ford. Fully dominated by Cold War political ideology, the relations between
United States and Cuba were frigidly distant in the public’s eye, while remaining hotly
intense and violent behind the scenes. Espionage sanctioned by each government against
the other was rife, with right-wing Cuban exile groups recruited by the CIA acting as the
fulcrum of this clandestine struggle. Mysterious paramilitary organizations known as
Omega 7 and the Co-ordination of the United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)
waged violent campaigns against Cuba while the Cuban intelligence services sent agents
to Miami to infiltrate these counter-revolutionary organizations. Sustained bombing
campaigns against Cuban embassies and other government sites formed a central part of
the ongoing anti-Castro campaign of violence. In the first half of 1974 alone, Cuban
embassies were attacked in Madrid, London, Paris, Mexico (Mérida and Mexico City),
and Kingston, Jamaica. One example of the deadly consequences of this ‘Cold War
game’ was the worst act of terrorism in the Americas before 11 September 2001. On 6
October 1976 a Cubana airliner exploded soon after take-off from Barbados killing all
onboard. Among the dead were the entire Cuban fencing team. This terrorist act is only
one of the numerous attacks against Cuban interests by anti-Castro organizations. The
destruction of the Cuban civilian airliner was merely one of the many activities the CIA
has been involved in since the ill-fated Bay of Pigs misadventure in 1961. The CIA had
been involved in numerous assassination plots against Castro and other acts designed to
destabilize the revolutionary government.26 For example, in 1971 the CIA introduced
African swine fever virus, appropriated from a US military base in the Canal Zone in
Panama, to Cuba via these anti-Castro Cuban exile organizations, forcing Cuban authori-
ties to slaughter half a million pigs.27
Despite the covert war being waged and overt relations between Cuba and the United
States remaining hostile, there was a brief moment in the middle of the 1970s when it
appeared that a potential rapprochement via sport might have been forged. Evoking the
precedent created by the ping pong exchange with China, a similar stratagem was
proposed for US−Cuba relations using baseball as its initial point of contact. The hard-
ened American stance towards Cuba was beginning to soften in 1974. In April the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee had voted for the restoration of diplomatic relations
between the two governments and for an end to the trade embargo. That bill, though, had
virtually no chance to become law, since even in the waning days of his presidency
Nixon remained adamantly anti-Castro, allegedly telling an aide, ‘There’ll be no change
toward that bastard [Castro] while I’m president.’28 The dislike between the two

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Carter and Sugden 109

administrations was mutual with Granma, the pre-eminent newspaper in Cuba, replacing
the ‘x’ in Nixon’s name with a swastika while reporting the Watergate scandal.
Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 increased the possibility of a new diplomatic-
political rapprochement between the two countries. A public sign of the thaw in relations
was the first meeting between US elected officials and Cuban government representa-
tives since the severing of diplomatic ties in 1961. US senators Jacob Javits and
Clairborne Pell flew to Havana to meet Fidel Castro and other Cuban officials in
September 1974. Although Nixon’s resignation publicly signalled a potential change in
attitude toward Cuba by the American government, and while Nixon’s administration
was dismantled, the major decision makers that determined US foreign policy remained
in place. With the swearing in of President Ford, who had been a key player in bringing
communist China in from the cold, it was thought among US State Department officials
and other influential Americans that Kissinger might wish to replicate his success by
cultivating similar relations with Cuba. Kissinger suggestively reinforced this view
commenting that ‘he saw no virtue in perpetual antagonism’ with Cuba. Secret negotia-
tions between State Department officials and the Ministry of the Interior began in
January 1975.29 However, these discussions did not include any mention of a potential
sports exchange. Any potential ‘baseball diplomacy’ was kept entirely separate from
other diplomatic negotiations and plans to the point of excluding prominent politicians
involved in other policy debates regarding Cuba.
The idea of a US−Cuban baseball exchange was first formally proposed under the
auspices of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bowie Kuhn. In a series of
secret communiqués between the State Department and Major League Baseball (MLB)
throughout 1975, the potential merits and ramifications of the US−Cuba baseball exhi-
bition game between the Cuban national team and an All-Star team of MLB stars were
weighed. There are a number of intriguing developments revealed in these documents.
The first is that MLB had been in communication with the Cuban Ministry of Sport,
the Instituto Nacional de Deporte, Educación Física, y Recreación (INDER) outside
any official political communication channels. The second is how blinkered American
bureaucrats were in their considerations of how the US would benefit from such a
sporting exhibition. A third revealing development is the degree to which MLB was
attempting to assert a role in international politics for what can only be considered
vague motivations at this time. Lastly, it is also revealing that the Cubans were also
apparently considering their own baseball infrastructure in relation to the American
leagues.
In declassified documents obtained from the NSA, Bowie Kuhn, writes to Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger in January 1975 proposing that a Major League All-Star squad
should travel to Cuba at the end of March for an exhibition series. In a series of com-
muniqués over the ensuing six weeks the proposal is considered, debated and rejected.
The following outlines the key features of those deliberations.
In his initial query Kuhn identifies a Cuban exile, Preston Gomez, who had a long
working relationship with MLB and had apparently already acted as a go-between for
MLB and INDER.30 At that time Gomez was a manager of the Houston Astros. In the
1940s he had played professional baseball in the US and continued to migrate seasonally
between Cuba and the United States until the sundering of political relations in January

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110 International Relations 26(1)

1961. Gomez remained in the US but worked continuously to maintain and improve
relations between the countries, contrary to the powerful political currents swirling
around him, especially the dominant virulent anti-Castro positions among Cuban exile
groups in Miami. Gomez’s role is intriguing because Cubans publicly known to be
‘working’ with the Castro regime or even ‘advocating’ normal relations with Castro’s
government were frequently targeted and all too commonly assassinated by the more
extreme elements of the right-wing Cuban exile groups. Omega 7 and CORU, for
instance, were running organized campaigns against Cuban interests around the world:
they destroyed several embassies and assassinated Cuban diplomats and other revolu-
tionary sympathizers. Both organizations were sponsored by and were comprised of
individuals either formerly or currently employed by the CIA. However, Gomez’s dia-
logues with INDER officials in Mexico and elsewhere were not public knowledge. This
is particularly curious since the initiative for this potential sporting exchange lies with
MLB, a transnational corporation, rather than either government. It is probable that Kuhn
was less interested in the politics than he was in the commercial potential that might
follow any rapprochement.
Kuhn’s underlying motives had no bearing on Kissinger’s considerations. Kissinger
emphatically and immediately rejected the exchange, writing in the margins of the memo
proposing an exhibition an underlined one-word response: ‘No!’31 However, Assistant
Secretary William Rogers was more supportive of Kuhn’s initiative. Rogers writes to
Kissinger backing Kuhn’s proposal, saying that ‘major league baseball has a magic value
in projecting a positive image of the United States wherever the sport is played’. Further,
Rogers felt that ‘the announcement that a major league squad was to play in Cuba in late
March [1975] would have a symbolic significance not limited to the sports pages’.32
Kissinger was curious as to why Rogers would favour such an exchange and asked
him to outline his arguments further.33 Rogers clearly saw such an exhibition as a poten-
tially potent symbolic gesture that could counteract Cuban propaganda demonizing the
United States, while simultaneously clarifying the American administration’s policies
towards Cuba. Rogers outlines the symbolism involved and the potential benefits to
the US administration. First, sending a Major League squad to Cuba would be ‘a public
relations move [that] would correct some of the distortions in the [US] public mind
about our Cuban policy – shifting the emphasis to a non-political and non-controversial
area’. Second, Rogers likened such a move to Kissinger’s earlier work with the Chinese
in shifting American public perceptions: ‘The Chinese ping-pong players were accepted
by the US public as a good way to break the ice between countries separated by decades
of hostility.’ Third, a baseball exhibition would help to redefine and dampen the
hostility endemic in US−Cuba relations at that time. Baseball with Cuba would serve a
similar purpose in bridging the gap between the Bay of Pigs and a new relationship with
Castro.34
In addition to outlining how such a spectacle might change American perceptions of
both Cuban and US government policies, Rogers also outlines how such an exchange
might affect both Castro and Cubans. He notes that prior to the Revolution, Cuba was
‘the most “Americanized” of any Latin American country’ in terms of cultural consump-
tion.35 While technically accurate, what Rogers is failing to recognize is that Cubans’
sense of self-identity and worth is drawn from a distinction between the American as the

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Carter and Sugden 111

Other and a complex Cuban concept of self that is wholly uncomfortable with the influ-
ence of US culture, while at the same time thoroughly enjoying the same kinds of com-
modities as signs of being modern.36
Like Mao Zedong before him, Rogers can see advantages in employing a low-risk
form of ‘people’s’ or ‘track two’ diplomacy through a sporting exchange to test the
waters for further political contact, without losing face if things did not work out.
Extending his argument regarding how such an exhibition would be publicly perceived,
Rogers also demonstrates the naïve assumptions of US State Department officials. On
the one hand he rather naively argues that the apolitical nature of baseball would make it
difficult for Cuban exiles ‘to take issue with [a baseball game] despite their general
uneasiness about any change in US−Cuba relations’37− an assertion that was patently
ill-informed based on the degree of political outrage expressed when an exhibition series
finally did take place 20 years later.38 On the other hand, he argues that this sporting
spectacle with an assumed American victory would be seen ‘as a shrewd Yankee political
move’, thereby arguing that the supposed apolitical nature of such an exchange was
entirely entangled in both international and domestic politics. In fact, Rogers pushes the
initial point by suggesting that the President would have a sturdy platform for making an
unequivocal comment on Cuban policy in an impending Miami appearance.39 The depth
of emotion coursing through the Cuban exile community and the particularly strong
influence of the Miami-based Cuban right wing in national political circles is something
that Rogers appears to be dismissing. If President Ford did make such an announcement
in Miami in 1975, it would have been tantamount to political suicide given the lobbying
power Cuban groups had already developed in Washington, particularly in view of the
upcoming election in 1976.
Rogers also demonstrated supreme arrogance by arguing that the exchange should go
ahead because ‘picking a game we are likely to win would go well with Americans who
are depressed by the regimented victories of the Communists in the Olympic Games’.40
Clearly he was unaware that by that point the Cuban national team had not lost in over
100 international games. There was no guarantee that a Major League squad would win,
and nor was the possibility of it losing even entertained. The potential public relations
damage from such a scenario was apparently unfathomable. This tunnel vision was
proved even narrower by the Cuban Olympic gold medal victories in 1992, 1996 and
2004 in baseball, as well as the resounding defeat of the Baltimore Orioles in that 1999
exhibition series. In short, Rogers was committing the ultimate sin of underestimating
his enemy.
These arguments notwithstanding, Rogers followed orders and informed Kuhn that
an exhibition could not proceed at this time.41 However, the channels were kept open
and in May 1975 Kuhn again pushed for a trip to Havana for the following March.42 The
impetus for this renewed effort emerged through unrelated yet parallel events. Senator
George McGovern made a diplomatic tour of Cuba in early 1975 and met with Castro.
During this encounter, the possibility of a sporting exchange or competitive sports
exhibitions was discussed among other topics. While McGovern was debriefed by the
State Department, which is standard procedure for all such diplomatic tours by US
politicians, Castro publicly ‘invited’ American baseball to come to Cuba for an exhibi-
tion series. McGovern, who supported further and broader contacts with Cuba, asserted

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112 International Relations 26(1)

that the Cubans were enthusiastic about any possible exhibition, although the likely
dates would be July 1975 at the earliest or the following March.43 McGovern was una-
ware of the earlier discussions between the Commissioner and the State Department
and when made cognizant of them agreed that the matter should be kept confidential.
Intriguingly, at the end of the State Department memo of 21 June 1975, in which Rogers
outlines the proposed exchange, he informs Kissinger that ‘Bowie [Kuhn] and I have
not brought McGovern into this and we do not intend to’.44 What is interesting and
beyond the scope of this paper is the State Department’s deliberate strategy to keep
McGovern out of the loop regarding MLB’s attempts to organize an exhibition series
with the Cuban national team. McGovern was a prominent liberal politician and a future
Democratic presidential nominee whose stance on a number of issues challenged
Kissinger’s own agendas.
During the summer of 1975 Kuhn pushes the State Department for an answer because
the only feasible time for such an exhibition series would be in late March, before the
start of the MLB season, as Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers notes in his com-
muniqué to Kissinger dated 21 January 1975: ‘Late March is the only time a Major
League visit to Cuba is possible. For purposes of TV and the Major League scheduling,
Kuhn will need a final answer as to such a trip sometime around February 15.’45 An
exhibition series, if it was to be part of political diplomacy, could feasibly occur at any
time. That Kuhn is insistent that the potential series has to be in March has nothing to do
with international politics and everything to do with MLB revenues tied to broadcasting
rights. MLB is interested in fostering contacts with a prominent baseball-playing nation
but not at the expense of its own contractual obligations and potential profits. An exhibi-
tion series between April and October would force Kuhn to interrupt the MLB season,
which the owners would not permit because of lost revenue. The immediacy of those
losses would not outweigh the potential gains in expanding the global labour pool of
athletes. The motivation for Kuhn revolves around the exploding unrest within the sport
and the inevitable rising cost of wages. The era of free agency was about to begin, which
would usher in spiralling wage costs for veterans but also the costs of signing new
recruits were already escalating.46 This particular moment is when Latin American ath-
letes began to establish a greater presence in MLB squads. A dozen or more young Latin
American athletes could be signed for the cost of one North American, thereby spreading
the owner’s initial investment risk in developing talent. It is in this vein, we argue, that
Kuhn is thinking of the Cubans: as a future labour pool which the Cubans were prior to
the Revolution.47 Rogers notes that Kuhn has come to the (most likely mistaken) view
that Cuban baseball officials are reconsidering their relationship with US professional
baseball. He acknowledges that ‘they have done their best to develop their talent, but
being shut out of professional baseball here hurts; they would now like Cuban players to
be able to look forward to the opportunity to play someday in our major leagues’.48
Misconceptions abounded throughout the entire process, with intentions masked and
motivations hidden by all the players involved. Rogers notes that the Cubans appeared to
be keen, yet he has his doubts over Cuban desire for such an exhibition and is seemingly
unaware of the direct communications Kuhn has had with his Cuban counterparts. Kuhn
has a letter from Fabio Ruíz Vinajeras, the vice-president of INDER, assuring him that
the Cubans would be interested when circumstances permitted. Ruíz Vinajeras reassures

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Carter and Sugden 113

Kuhn that failure to organize the proposed exhibition is not through Kuhn’s lack of
interest or effort.49 Yet Rogers notes that he has seen nothing on the Cuba side that could
be taken to be ‘a move to which the baseball trip might be considered’.50 He suggests that
there could a number of reasons for this apparent lack of interest:

This may be due to the stickiness of our communications techniques. It may be that the Cubans
themselves have not been able to bring themselves to decide to do anything. It may be that the
sports effort is a somewhat discoordinated step by a ministry not entirely related to political
objectives and strategies.51

That particular misconception was ripped apart when in early 1975 Fidel Castro publicly
invited a Major League squad to visit Cuba. His public ‘invitation’ re-galvanized US
State Department considerations. Such a trip ‘would be to engender cordial relations
between Baseball in Cuba and in the United States. There would be no political aspect or
purpose.’52 This proposed exhibition would consist of no more than two games in
Havana, one of which would be televised live by an American television network in
cooperation with the Cuban Broadcasting Institute. That telecast would carry a substantial
rights payment, outside the already existing broadcasting contracts MLB had with US
television corporations, that would be split equally with INDER. Although the initial
comment is that the dates for such an event were open, the plan’s emphasis was placed
on the games occurring ‘sometime in the last two weeks of March, 1976’.53 However, an
additional suggestion is made that ‘matches in Cuba should be combined with a match in
Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] for general foreign policy purposes’.54 Thus once
again baseball was to be used as a foreign policy tool as advocated since A. G. Spalding
asserted that baseball should ‘follow the flag’.55 A Caribbean tour of this nature would
also be in Bowie Kuhn’s interests since it would permit the potential expansion of MLB’s
markets overseas and he thought the extension of the proposed tour was ‘an excellent
one’. The Dominican Republic was rapidly becoming the primary overseas source of
baseball labour, and an opportunity to also transform the Dominican Republic into a
market for American baseball rather than the domestic national league would be an
additional godsend.56 Extending the tour would fit in with the Commissioner’s first
attempts to ‘grow the game’ in what amounted to the earliest vestiges of the globalization
of baseball.57 This proposed tour, however, never materialized.
Throughout the 1975 deliberations and negotiations over whether or not to organize
such a trip, the bureaucrats at the State Department masked their motivations for the
potential sporting event. The eventual proposed contingent that would visit Cuba would
be a selection of coaches and athletes from the rosters of all Major League squads along
with ‘a party which would include umpires, club and league officials and American press
representatives’. Yet while they were aware that there would be no overt political aspect
or purpose to such a trip, Rogers and other State Department officials clearly foresee that
it would be extremely useful political propaganda. Their interests were how to make the
American government look good with the public at a time when American politicians
and bureaucrats were dealing with the last aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
However, in 1977 a delegation of coaches and athletes from the Houston Astros did
fly to Cuba to put on a coaching clinic and foster initial contacts with the Cuban baseball

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114 International Relations 26(1)

structure.58 The Astros, however, played no games; the trip was only permitted by the US
Treasury and State Department if no games were to be played, precisely because of the
potential political ramifications. Instead, the trip was an informational exchange on
coaching techniques. The president of the Houston Astros, Tal Smith, had a long personal
history with Cuba, having played there prior to the Revolution, and he was a close
colleague of Preston Gomez. Although Gomez was fired as manager early in the 1975
season, he still worked within MLB and continued to work towards greater communication
and understanding between the United States and Cuba under the auspices of baseball.
Although he apparently did not travel to Cuba with the Astros’ contingent, he must have
played a significant role in facilitating the coaching exchange given his close friendship
with Tal Smith. Yet neither man informed Bowie Kuhn or MLB that they were going to
Cuba because Smith did not want to get turned down.
Bowie Kuhn would, in all likelihood, have refused any request from Smith for a visit.
By this time, Gerald Ford had lost the 1976 presidential election and Jimmy Carter had
replaced him in the Oval Office. Carter signalled a slight shift in the Americans’ approach
to the Cuban government, in part by replacing Kissinger with Cyrus Vance as Secretary
of State. These political changes appeared to create a window of opportunity for various
executives from MLB to travel to Cuba. Tal Smith was not the first. Bill Veeck, the
Chicago White Sox owner, had already made a trip in 1977 to evaluate Cuban talent.59
George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, also visited Havana after several
comments from influential Cubans, including Fidel Castro, that they would like to see an
exhibition game between the Cuban national team and the Yankees.60 Bowie Kuhn pre-
vented such a game from occurring, despite the keen interest of the Yankees’ officials to
participate in such a spectacle, because of those same concerns over controlling Cuban
labour.61 Other owners apparently felt that the Yankees would have a distinct advantage
in signing Cuban players because of the proposed exhibition game. Kuhn baldly stated
that there would be no exhibition games if Cuban players were not free to negotiate con-
tracts to play in the United States despite Cubans flatly announcing that no team would
have an advantage because they were not interested in selling their players.62 In other
words, MLB’s interest was not the promotion of baseball but a desire to obtain control
over a pool of athletic labour that was currently beyond their grasp.
The 1975 exhibition game did not occur as Kuhn desired, and the efforts to hold the
exhibition in 1976 did not prove fruitful either. These efforts did not die though. Individual
owners attempted, and in some cases succeeded, in making trips to Havana to meet with
INDER officials. Indeed, the owner of the Cleveland Indians, Gabe Paul, made a visit in
1977 after Veeck’s and Steinbrenner’s separate spring visits, and the Seattle Mariners
had an exhibition trip all arranged with the Cubans that Kuhn scuppered in 1978.63 These
trips did not even reach the State Department because they did not fit Kuhn’s agenda for
Major League Baseball. Instead, they were driven by individual team owners wanting to
access Cuban talent ahead of their competitors. That was the context within which Tal
Smith led his group of employees to Cuba for a few ‘secret’ coaching clinics. The Astros,
though, were not the first US sports team to visit Cuba as part of a nascent yet burgeoning
effort to foster cultural exchanges. On 5 April 1977, the first American sports team to
play in Cuba since 1961 was a university basketball team. Senators George McGovern

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Carter and Sugden 115

and James Abourezk (both representing South Dakota) watched from the stands as a
team made up of athletes from South Dakota universities played the Cuban national
men’s team in Havana.64 Other exchanges did materialize, in athletics for example, in the
ensuing months, but for the time being baseball diplomacy was essentially dead.
A baseball exhibition between a MLB club and the Cuban national team would have
to wait another 23 years until 1999. Peter Angelos, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles,
would become the catalyst for building a two-game exhibition series with a game played
in Havana in March of that year, before the start of the MLB season, and then another in
Baltimore two months later during one of the only off days the Orioles athletes had
during that season. Once again, the initial stages circumvented the US government with
clandestine communication between Angelos and the Cuban National Commission of
Baseball. This proposed tour too would face determined resistance from both Cuban
exiles in the United States and bureaucrats within the US State Department.65 Thus,
because there were no US political officials involved in the planning or the staging of
this exhibition series, it could not be considered to be a two-way process of baseball
diplomacy and had little effect on US−Cuba relations.66
Despite individual efforts, the potential encounter between Cuba and the United
States on the baseball diamond had too many competing factions to ever succeed as a
diplomatic bridge between the two countries. Beyond the machinations of Bowie Kuhn
and the owners, the strategic ambitions of the Department of State also meant that any
American approach to Cuba would be highly unlikely to succeed. The failure in the
development of potential ‘baseball diplomacy’ is situated within broader Cold War
politics, both domestically within the US government and internationally. Sport was
constantly part of this shadowy game − a game with real grievous costs. The multiple
attempts to undermine Castro’s regime and the Cubans’ Soviet-backed, defiant responses
shaped the relationship between the Cuban and US governments during this period,
leaving any attempts at sporting diplomacy between the two dead in the water.

Conclusion
How sports-led diplomacy between the China and the United States in 1971 was allowed
to be successful, but failed in the case of the US and Cuba only a few years later can only
be explained, as we have attempted to do here, through a forensic examination of the
surrounding circumstances. In the case of China it is clear that both the established
superpower and the emerging one, albeit for different reasons, saw major advantages to
be accrued in exploiting what may have been a serendipitous sporting encounter for
political advantage. The United States wanted to pull out of Vietnam and believed
forging a relationship with China could help facilitate this. China had fallen out with the
Soviet Union and felt the need for a closer alignment with the United States to counter-
balance the growing animosity and aggression being displayed by its former ally. For its
part, the Nixon administration was only too happy to help drive a wedge between the two
main powers in the Communist orbit, even if this meant sacrificing Chiang Kai-shek and
Nationalist China and upsetting the Japanese. Furthermore, both Mao Zedong and Nixon
were men with big egos who were concerned to strengthen and boost their image. Nixon

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116 International Relations 26(1)

had an election to think about and Mao needed a breakthrough with the Americans to
enhance his reputation as a statesman both at home and abroad. Broadly, then, we can
conclude that the ping pong initiative succeeded because of an interdependence of
interests and an emergent ‘symmetrical power relationship’ between the United States
and China, with corresponding domestic personal and political gains for both Nixon
and Mao.67
Cuba presented a different case at a different time. Famously, a week is a long time in
politics, and three years is an eternity. By the time the baseball initiative was first
proposed to Kissinger in 1975, Nixon had been engulfed in the Watergate scandal and
had left the White House. The Vietnam War was over and the United States was winning
what remained of the Cold War – politically, economically, technologically and militar-
ily. Although it was backed by the Soviet Union, Cuba, unlike China, was not an emerg-
ing superpower − rather it was a proxy of a declining one. The then President, Gerald
Ford, had little or nothing to gain politically from encouraging a relationship with Cuba,
but he might have had much to lose. Carter’s election in 1976 led to a slight shift in
approach, but circumstances still prevented any real rapprochement. The expatriate
Cuban population in the United States was both large and influential, particularly in
Florida, a notorious ‘swing state’ in US electoral politics. Any rapprochement with
Castro’s Cuba was regarded as political suicide for anybody who wanted to occupy and
stay in office. Castro, on the other hand, had much to gain. The problem of almost total
dependence on dwindling Soviet economic support could have been much ameliorated
by renewed trade with the United States. A further factor was the presence of a third
party, the transnational corporation Major League Baseball. Its role in shaping the
rhetoric and negotiations of any baseball diplomacy cannot be ignored, but MLB had
its own vested interests in promoting an exhibition series, as outlined above. Those
motivations did not necessarily coincide with the political concerns of either the
American or the Cuban governments.
Finally, in considering these two cases of US sporting diplomacy, we have to take note
of the cultural significance of table tennis and baseball in China, the United States and
Cuba respectively. While table tennis is a prominent feature of Chinese popular culture
it is at best marginal to the sporting milieu in the United States. The Americans knew
they were highly likely to lose in a ping pong contest with the Chinese – ‘friendship first’
notwithstanding – but the outcome of the games was not nearly as important as the fact
that the two sides were actually playing together. In contrast, at the time baseball was the
national sport of both the United States and Cuba and as such would be very high-profile,
so that the outcome of any contest could have significant consequences for both parties
in sporting and political circles. Therefore, despite what sports entrepreneurs may have
wanted, any US−Cuba baseball encounter during the Cold War posed too great a risk,
particularly for the Americans.
Thus, while there may have been symmetrical and balanced mutual interest in base-
ball circles in the United States and Cuba for facilitating sporting diplomacy between the
two countries, albeit for different reasons, the same could not be said for political elites.
On the contrary, in terms of foreign policy in the 1970s, it was in the interests of the
United States to keep Cuba isolated and weak. In other words, there was an asymmetrical
imbalance in power relations and political and economic interests on either side of the

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Carter and Sugden 117

Florida Straits, with Cuba heavily outweighed. Finally, there is what we do not know and
will probably never know. As Perez reminds us, the highly personalized nature of the
antagonism between the United States and post-revolutionary Cuba should not be
underestimated when trying to account for what otherwise might seem to be an irrational
longevity of mutual ‘fear and loathing’.68 No doubt buried deep in the NSA or CIA
Archive there are other documents that might, one day in the distant future, shed light on
the continuation of the US diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba almost 50 years
after the Revolution and two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Notes
  1 Roger Levermore, and Adrian Budd, ‘Sport and International Relations: Continued Neglect?’,
in Adrian Budd and Roger Levermore (eds), Sport and International Relations: An Emerging
Relationship (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 6−15.
  2 John Sugden, ‘As Presently Constituted, Sport at an International Level Does More Harm
than Good’, in Geta Cohen (ed.), ‘Peace and Understanding through Sport, Journal of the
Institute for International Sport, 2(1), 1989, pp. 63−8.
  3 Jerome Slater, ‘The Domino Theory and International Politics: The Case of Vietnam’, Security
Studies, 3(2), 1993, pp. 186−224.
  4 G. Dutt, ‘China and the Shift in Super Power Relations’, International Studies, 4(13), 1974,
p. 644.
  5 Dutt, ‘China and the Shift in Super Power Relations’, pp. 635−62.
  6 Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005).
  7 Allen S. Whiting, ‘Sino-Soviet Hostilities and Implications for US Policy’, National Security
Archive (NSA), George Washington University. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/sino.sov.9.pdf.
  8 Mark Thee, ‘US−Chinese Rapprochement and Vietnam’, Journal of Peace Research, 9(1),
1972, pp. 63−7.
  9 Susan Brownell, ‘Sport and Politics Don’t Mix: China’s Relationship with the IOC during the
Cold War’, in Steve Wagg and David Andrews (eds), East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War
(London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 253−71.
10 In the days before cell phones, the presence of the paparazzi waiting for the bus to arrive must
raise questions concerning just how ‘spontaneous’ Cowen’s gesture actually was.
11 Z. Hong and Y Sun, ‘The Butterfly Effect and the Making of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy”’,
Journal of Contemporary China, 9, 2000, pp. 429−48.
12 For the coming decades, as the most vehement phase of the Cultural Revolution dwindled
and China moved away from its political isolationism, the concept of ‘friendship first, com-
petition second’ was emblematic of the PRC’s modus operandi when it came to using sport
as a tool to foster better relations with the international community. The encounter with the
United States during the World Table Tennis Championships in Japan marked the beginning
of this strategy. For further details of this, see Fan Hong and Xiong Xiaozheng, ‘Communist
China, Sport, Politics and Diplomacy’, International Journal of the History of Sport,19(2),
2002, pp. 333−8.
13 Various accounts of these events can be found and this information was garnered from the
following: Alex Wolff and David Davis, ‘Opening Volley’, Sports Illustrated, 16 June 2008;
Chang and Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story.

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118 International Relations 26(1)

14 Telecon (tape) conversation between President Richard E. Nixon and Secretary of State,
Henry Kissinger, 14 April 1971. NSA, George Washington University. Available at: www.
gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/05.pdf.
15 Brownell, ‘Sport and Politics Don’t Mix’.
16 Lee Farnsworth, ‘Japan: The Year of the Shock’, Asian Survey, 12(1), 1972, pp. 46−55.
17 Ray S. Cline, ‘Peking’s People’s Diplomacy: A “New Page” in Sino-American Relations’,
NSA, George Washington University. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB66/ch-13.pdf.
18 Daniel Lieberfield, ‘Evaluating the Contribution of Two-Track Diplomacy to Conflict
Termination in South Africa, 1984−1990’, Journal of Peace Research, 39(3), 2002, pp. 355−72.
19 Lieberfield, ‘Evaluating the Contribution of Two-Track Diplomacy’.
20 Chang and Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, p. 603.
21 Chang and Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story, p. 609.
22 Gerald Chan, ‘The “Two Chinas” Problem and the Olympic Formula’, Pacific Affairs, 58(3),
1994, pp. 473−90.
23 Xin Xu, ‘Modernising China in the Olympic Spotlight: China’s National Identity and the
2008 Beijing Olimpiad’, Sociological Review (London, Blackwell, 2006) pp. 90−107.
24 For further details concerning these back-channel negotiations and the various roles
played in them by Kissinger, Nixon, Mao and Zhou Enlai, see William Burr (ed.), ‘The
Beijing−Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China, September
1970 − July 1971’, NSA, George Washington University, 27 February 2002. Available at: www.
gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/; ‘Negotiating US−Chinese Rapprochement’,
NSA, George Washington University. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB70/index2.html. Michel Oksenberg, ‘A Decade of Sino-American Relations’,
Foreign Affairs, 61(1), 1982, pp. 175−95; Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978); Henry Kissenger, The White House Years (Boston:
Little Brown, 1979).
25 Louis A. Perez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988).
26 There is a vast array of literature detailing the CIA plots to assassinate Castro and destabilize
the Revolution, and the Cuban government’s counter-espionage efforts conducted in the US.
Two of the more recent, yet by no means exhaustive, include Fabien Escalante, Executive
Action: 634 Ways to Kill Castro (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2006); Don Bohning, The Castro
Obsession: Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959−1965 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006).
27 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492−Present (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1995), p. 542. Additionally, there is a museum in Havana dedicated to these plots,
involving everything from exploding cigars to LSD-laced wetsuits for diving. There are
various sources detailing these plots.
28 Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 261.
29 Gott, Cuba, pp. 261−2.
30 Bowie Kuhn, Letter to Henry Kissinger, NSA, George Washington University, 14 January
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/01-01.htm.
31 William D. Rogers, Action Memorandum, NSA, George Washington University, 18 January
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/03-01.htm.

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Carter and Sugden 119

32 William D. Rogers, Action Memorandum: Summary, NSA, George Washington University,

13 February 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/06-
01.htm.
33 Henry A. Kissinger, confidential telegram to William Rogers and Lawrence S. Eagleburger,
NSA, George Washington University, 15 February 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/08-01.htm.
34 William D. Rogers, ‘Additional Talking Points on Sending a Baseball Team to Cuba’, NSA,
George Washington University, 19 February 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/09-01.htm.
35 Rogers, ‘Additional Talking Points’.
36 Louis A. Pérez, On Being Cuban: Identity, Nationality, Culture (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1999).
37 Rogers, ‘Additional Talking Points’.
38 Evidence of this particularly strong passion was fully manifest in both the difficulties arrang-
ing an exhibition series two decades later and the hundreds of protestors picketing Camden
Yards in Baltimore, led by three Cuban–American congressional representatives making
speeches outside the stadium, unabashedly condemning the exhibition games. Thomas
F. Carter, The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 89−97.
39 Rogers, ‘Additional Talking Points’.
40 Rogers, ‘Additional Talking Points’.
41 William D. Rogers, Briefing Memorandum, NSA, George Washington University, 24 February
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/10-01.htm.
42 Bowie Kuhn, letter to William D. Rogers, NSA, George Washington University, 13 May
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/12-01.htm.
43 Culver Gleysteen, Baseball Exchange with Cuba, Department of State Memo, NSA, George
Washington University, 12 June 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB12/docs/14-01.htm and www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/14-
02.htm.
44 William D. Rogers, Action Memorandum, NSA, George Washington University, 21 June
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/16-02.htm.
45 William D. Rogers, Briefing Memorandum, NSA, George Washington University, 21 January
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/04-01.htm.
46 John Helyar, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball (New York: Ballantine Books,
1994); Marvin Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game: The Inside Story of Baseball’s New Deal
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).
47 See Milton Jamail, Full Count: Inside Cuban Baseball (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2000)
48 Rogers, Action Memorandum, 13 February 1975.
49 Fabio Ruíz Vinajeras, Letter to Bowie Kuhn, NSA, George Washington University, 21 May
1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/13-01.htm.
50 Rogers, Action Memorandum, 13 February 1975.
51 Rogers, Action Memorandum, 13 February 1975.

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120 International Relations 26(1)

52 Department of State, Outline of Cuban Exhibition Game Proposal, NSA, George Washington
University, 13 June 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/
15-01.htm.
53 Department of State, Outline of Cuban Exhibition Game Proposal.
54 Culver Gleysteen, Baseball Exchange with Cuba, Department of State Memo, NSA, George
Washington University, 12 June 1975. Available at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB12/docs/14-01.htm and www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB12/docs/14-02.
htm.
55 A. G. Spalding, America’s National Game (New York: American Sports Publishing Co.,
1911).
56 For a thorough discussion of the tensions between the American and Dominican professional
baseball organizations, see Alan M. Klein, Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican
Dream (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
57 For a full discussion of the globalization of MLB, see Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The
Globalization of Major League Baseball (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
58 See Jamail, Full Count, pp. 125−7.
59 ‘Veeck Leaves Quietly to Scout in Cuba’, New York Times, 26 May 1977, p. 91.
60 Murray Chass, ‘Behind the Kuhn−Cuba Tangle’, New York Times, 12 March 1977, p. 28.
61 Murray Chass, ‘Yanks Upset as Kuhn Vetoes their Cuba Trip’, New York Times, 9 March
1977, p. 17.
62 Chass, “Behind the Kuhn−Cuba Tangle’.
63 ‘Indians Seeking to Play Cubans’, New York Times, 2 March 1978, p. D18; ‘Indians vs Cuba
Series Snagged’, New York Times, 24 March 1978, p. A19.
64 Jane Franklin, The Cuban Revolution and the United States: A Chronological History
(Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1992), p. 124.
65 Thomas F. Carter, The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban
Baseball (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 90−1.
66 Thomas F. Carter, ‘The Political Fallacy of Baseball Diplomacy’, Peace Review, 11(4), 1999,
pp. 95−107.
67 For fuller discussions regarding theories of interdependency and symmetrical and
asymmetrical international power relations, see Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, ‘Power
and Interdependence’, Survival, 15(4), 1973, pp. 158-63; and David Baldwin, ‘Power and
Social Exchange’, American Political Science Review, 72, 1978, pp. 1229−42.
68 Louis Perez, ‘Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy Toward Cuba’, Journal
of Latin American Studies, 34(2), 2002, pp. 227−54.

John Sugden is Professor of the Sociology of Sport at the University of Brighton and Visiting
Professor at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He has researched and written widely
around topics concerned with the politics and sociology of sport and his books on international
boxing and on sport in Northern Ireland have won national and international awards. Professor
Sugden is also well known for his critical studies of  FIFA, and for his investigative research into
football’s underground economy. He is widely recognised as a leading authority on sport in divided
societies and sport as a vehicle for co-existence and peace-building within and between nations.
Professor Sugden is also Director of the University of Brighton’s flagship international sport and
co-existence programme, Football for Peace.

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Carter and Sugden 121

Thomas F. Carter earned his doctorate in anthropology from the University of New Mexico and
is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Chelsea School of Sport in the University of Brighton, teach-
ing undergraduate and postgraduate students on the political economy of sport. He has conducted
ethnographic research in Havana, Cuba since 1995 on the interstices of sport and identity in
Cuba. His award-winning ethnography on Cuban baseball, The Quality of Home Runs (Duke
University Press), as well as his book on the experiences on transnational sports professionals, In
Foreign Fields (Pluto Press), addresses various contemporary contexts of sport. His research
continues to focus on issues revolving around the politics of transnational migration, identity
politics and global governance in sport.

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