A Castro offers hope for a U.S.-Cuba future in baseball

"A great week,'' Alexei Ramirez said about Major League Baseball's visit to Cuba. As Tony Castro charismatically worked the crowd like a trained politician, wearing Under Armour sunglasses and a Nike T-shirt, he would have blended in any corporate-fueled baseball stadium in America.

Except this was in Cuba, and some of the hands Castro shook were extended by men who defected from his country in the dead of night on a small boat: Jose Abreu and Yasiel Puig. So it was more than a little odd seeing Castro, the most popular here of Fidel Castro's eight sons, kid Abreu after the White Sox slugger dropped a ball a young boy threw to him during a clinic as part of Major League Baseball's goodwill…