As superstar players from around the world step up to the plate this weekend for the start of the 117th Major League Baseball (MLB) season in the United States, a far smaller league is already in full swing in Taiwan, an island falling back in love with the nearest thing it has to a national sport. [...] First introduced to Taiwan more than 100 years ago by Japanese occupiers, baseball has become so ingrained in the island’s culture that it is even depicted on the NT$500 (HK$128) note.

In a few weeks, 14 members of the Felix Mantilla Little League will board a plane that will cross an ocean and land in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Most of the kids, ages 9 and 10, have never been out of Milwaukee. In Puerto Rico, they will play baseball games against age-group peers. [...] But baseball is not the most important part of the trip. The kids, mostly from low-income families, will visit historic Old San Juan, the Arecibo Observatory and the El Yunque rainforest and will tour the Puerto Rico Sports Hall of Fame.

“What our players and what the Cuban players ... did in those six days did more for government relations between our two countries than has been done in the last 40 years by the governments,” Little League baseball coach Jim Carter said.[...] They spent their April spring break in Havana, learning about Cuba’s intense passion for baseball, seeing cultural and historic sights, getting to meet some of Cuba’s best professional baseball players, making new friends despite language barriers and playing baseball against local teams.

Baseball is obviously something that the United States and the Cuban people share a common love of and it's a part of both of our heritages, and frankly, also part of the type of exchanges that we are pursuing in business, in culture, in the arts, in sports that can bring the American and Cuban people closer together.

The Dodgers arrived in Cuba Tuesday on a goodwill mission for the first time in 16 years, inspiring hope that Cuban-American relations are headed for better. [...] If Cuban-American relations eventually allow Cubans to freely leave, it wouldn’t initially have a huge impact on the MLB, says Joe Kehoskie, the first non-Cuban, American baseball agent to sign Cuban defectors. 

A State Department official said in an email that the American Embassy in Havana was aware of the efforts by private institutions like the Caribbean Baseball Initiative to increase ties between the two countries, and described baseball as “an excellent avenue for sports diplomacy and creating good will between our peoples.”

The Grand Valley State University baseball team made history with an unprecedented trip to play their sport in Cuba. Now they’re ready to share their experience in a brand new documentary.  The Laker baseball team went to Cuba in January 2012 on a humanitarian mission with a local non-profit organization. The documentary “A Lesson in Diplomacy: Grand Valley State University Baseball in Cuba” tells the story of that historic trip… from the baseball games to the players to the cultural experience.