Despite Cuba’s track record of culling baseball talent, players on the island still make about as much money as an average construction worker. So it’s not surprising that one of their best players, 26-year-old center fielder Rusney Castillo, has defected from his home country in the hopes of signing with a Major League team in the U.S. This comes just months after Cuba’s recent change in policy allowing its players to sign with foreign leagues. But with the U.S.

Balls and strikes, not politics, ruled the day Wednesday at a baseball diamond in Havana, as last year’s college championship team from the University of Tampa played an exhibition game against a Cuban youth squad. The visitors scraped out a hard-fought 2-1 win, but the encounter was more about bridging the vast gulf between these neighboring nations that disagree on just about everything except their shared love of the game.

Cubans awoke on Friday for the first time in half a century with the right to buy new and used vehicles from the state without special permission, but price markups of 400 percent or more quickly dashed most people's expectations. A new Kia Rio hatchback that starts at $13,600 in the United States sells for $42,000 in Havana, while a fresh-off-the-lot Peugeot 508 family car, the most luxurious of which lists for the equivalent of about $53,000 in the U.K., will set one back a cool $262,000.

For more than two decades, running for Congress in this sun-soaked capital of Cuban exiles has required two things: a Republican registration card and a hard line toward the Castro regime. So when Joe Garcia became the first Cuban-American Democrat from the state to win election to the House in 2012, it signaled a crack in a critical GOP constituency.

Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday called on the United States to establish civilized relations with his country, recognizing a new tone in bilateral talks on secondary issues while reiterating that the country's political and economic system were non-negotiable. The United States and Cuba have appeared more positive of late as talks around immigration, postal services, disaster prevention and other security issues have taken place, with officials from both countries cautiously welcoming each other's pragmatism and seriousness in interviews with Reuters.

In Cuba, a ban on imported vehicles has kept the roads full of classic American cars. But those famously vintage-looking streets could get a modern makeover next year. Today, the Cuban government announced it will lift restrictions on imported cars for the first time in 50 years. The country, which has no car factories of its own, will soon open its borders to imported automobiles, vans, trucks, and motorcycles.

During the memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela, as tens of thousands gathered in the FNB stadium in Johannesburg and millions more watched on television, an entirely different story emerged: the ten-second interaction between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro.