By William Gildea
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, March 30, 1999; Page D3

On Sunday at noon when I heard that familiar dulcet voice with a wink in it, "I'm Jon Miller, with Joe Morgan," I knew enough to slide a tape into my VCR. As Morgan stood waiting to speak, his eyes shone with something more than readiness. Shortly, I would understand, as the two opened their latest ESPN broadcast from the novel site of Havana, perched near the roof of Estadio Latinoamericano. A Cuban all-star team and the Baltimore Orioles were about to play a game that broke the mold of spring exhibition games, shattered it, actually, because it would be as hard-played as the deciding game of a World Series. Morgan could see it coming.

The game was meaningful mostly because baseball, as Miller explained, is more than a pastime in Cuba, it is a "passion for all ages" – and all wanted their team to win. Miller and Morgan would help us, after 40 years, to glimpse the Cuban people and understand the depth of their feeling about baseball at the same time they expertly described and analyzed an exquisite extra-inning game. The packed stadium was filled by invitation only, so as to create no embarrassments for Fidel Castro – as Miller coyly put it, "55,000 close, personal friends of Fidel." But Morgan and a camera crew earlier had found their way to a place in the city known for conversations about baseball rather than politics or anything else. Morgan, amid the Cuban people, had that look. It was the look of love, for the game of baseball.

"Yesterday, Joe was at the 'Hot Corner,' as they call it here – my partner Joe Morgan went down to talk some ball because that's what they do, every day," Miller said by way of introduction. The tape rolled. Morgan explained to the people engulfing him: "When I grew up, we played baseball all the time." Of course, they did, too, they told him. "That's why you're good," Morgan replied. Back in the booth, Morgan said: "I tell you, Jon, that was a great experience for me. When you're in that crowd and they're talking baseball . . . you can just feel the love they have for the game."

When Miller ran down the Cuban lineup, clearly loving it as he sounded the mellifluous names, his honeyed voice rising and dipping and stretching the syllables, introducing third baseman Omar Linares as "the legendary one," I canceled the afternoon and kept the VCR running as well.

Miller and Morgan must be the broadcast version of Tinker and Evers. Miller and Morgan are almost perfectly complementary. Their knowledge and their professional approach to broadcasting combined Sunday to make their own music that always remained in harmony with the salsa sounds from the stands. What we saw and what we heard was sweet, and sad at the same time, considering the people's plight under Castro. Spectators peered into the park from an apartment building beyond the outfield fence, as Miller said, "a la Wrigley."

Miller and Morgan were as composed as if they were sending greetings from Kansas City on a Sunday night in late summer. Their job had to have been difficult in some measure, because of the unfamiliar terrain. Yet an absence of histrionics and hysteria enabled them to let a special game unfold like a grand meal. Their insights were spontaneous and to the point, often explaining why the Cuban players did what they did, be it bunt or run or pitch high and away. They might foresee a bunt, then step aside to offer a full view of the action, let the play enrapture us.

Miller and Morgan simply are free of everything that's so often dismaying about sports broadcasting – the mammoth egos, the wild opinions, the imitative approach, the cliches and the hackneyed variations on simple English. Miller and Morgan had a great game to broadcast and a love story to tell, and they wove them masterfully. They did not try to overwhelm with canned information from the 40-year gap. They talked about watching a Cuban World Series game with local fans on television at a restaurant. You could imagine them there, talking baseball, making new friends.

When the octogenarian Connie Marrero, who won 39 games in five years with the Washington Senators, kept throwing ceremonial "first" pitches, then called for Brady Anderson to step in against him, Miller and Morgan shared a moment that many people said could be expected at a baseball game in Cuba: the unexpected.

"He didn't want to throw out just one pitch, Joe."

Morgan: "I can't believe you, Brady – he tried to bunt" on an 80-something pitcher.

Morgan also could hardly believe that the Cubans made two baserunning errors in the first inning, killing their hope for a run or more. But the Cubans had terrific pitching. "The great equalizer in baseball," said Morgan, "is pitching."

ESPN's snippets from around the city said a lot in mere seconds about life in Cuba. ESPN did not try to do too much in a confining framework. We saw cars from the '50s, tailfins from another time. Could that Dodge still be running on fluid drive, which enabled you to start up without shifting as long as you weren't going uphill? Was that a '40s Plymouth? Miller and Morgan agreed, the country must be full of amazing mechanics.

Most often, though, the camera caught the people at the "Hot Corner" and in the bleachers, some shaded from the 80-degree sunshine by colorful umbrella-hats. When Cuba scored to cut the Orioles' lead to 2-1, the noisy reaction made it sound like a moral victory. Even more so when they tied the game at 2. But when the Orioles finally won, 3-2, the stadium fell silent. Estadio Latinoamericano looked full of sad faces, just like our parks when our favorite teams lose. We knew how they felt. The Cubans, of course, were just like us.

This broadcast showed us in a way that touched us. I'll play the tape sometime and listen to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan again, see the Cuban people and wish all of us could share our love for the game.