Boston Globe 11/24/09: Senior softballers from Bay State play at diplomacy in Cuba. They burst into the hush of the four-star Hotel Telegrafo like old friends into a neighborhood pub, wearing baseball pants and slapping one another on the back. Shoving together white-linened tables, they beckoned waiters to bring cans of cold beer and seafood salads. The group of aging amateur softball players – half of them Cuban residents, half visitors from Massachusetts – had met just a few hours before, standing nervously along the base lines of a children’s baseball field flanked by palm trees while a band played “El Himno de Bayamo’’ and “The Star Spangled Banner.’’ Separated by language and culture and a half-century political divide, at first they had hardly known what to make of one another.