By ADAM RAWNSLEY
April 5 is opening day for Major League Baseball. This season, there’s speculation that the recent thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations could lead to even more players from Cuba, home to some of the world’s best ballplayers and most enthusiastic fans, joining the big leagues here in the United States.
Maybe so, but it wasn’t too long ago that America and Cuba’s favorite pastime was also a battleground in Cold War espionage. On a few occasions, Cuba’s unique fondness for baseball betrayed its covert activities — at home and abroad — to American reconnaissance, thanks to the visible presence or absence of distinctive baseball diamonds.
The stories certainly have the whiff of the apocryphal about them — and they’ve since become minor pieces of intel lore. But there are kernels of truth in the tales.
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