It is an unusual moment in baseball history to see the news that Fidel Castro is dead. Cuba's divergent path into communism, started almost 60 years ago, has shaped how generations of Americans, Cubans and Cuban-Americans have seen the relationship between the two countries, a relationship that has also played out on baseball diamonds across decades.

The image of the Cuban dictator in a baseball uniform might seem as cartoonish today as it was on TV in the 1970s or '80s. But that was only if you could afford to pretend that you didn’t know what the Castro regime in Cuba was, playing make-believe as he switched from his military uniform as Cuba's unelected president into the more relatable togs that made a dictator look like a fan.

Castro's association with the game also spun out a cottage industry of speculation, including the legend of his trying out with either the Yankees or Senators -- which never happened -- to former big leaguer Don Hoak's claim in a 1964 Sport magazine column that he batted against Castro after a young Fidel stormed a Cuban League diamond and took the hill in 1950 or 1951 -- which also didn't happen.

Records show that Castro apparently pitched in an intramural game in college and tried out for and failed to make his school's varsity team. But from such a modest reality, more elaborate fantasies have been spun, even inspiring Tim Wendel's novel "Castro's Curveball," a literary echo of a generational and journalistic conceit generating "what if" wishcasting that suggested an alternate reality in which Castro made it on the mound and stayed out of politics.

Cuban president Fidel Castro, as he liked to present himself on the diamond. Sven Creutzmann/Getty Images

But the impact that Castro had on the game is far more real. Generations of Cubans who play baseball haven't been free to choose where they play the game. They haven't been free to follow in the footsteps of Minnie Minoso, Major League Baseball's first Latin star from the '50s and Latin America's Jackie Robinson, all rolled into one. We never got to see what all-world third baseman Omar Linares, among many others, could have done on big league diamonds, but he hit .368 with 404 home runs in the Cuban National Series. We had to settle for a taste when the Olympics rolled around, as Cuba won gold in baseball in 1992 and 1996 and silver in 2000.

We can say the game is poorer for it, but that seems trite. The lives of the men who play or played and those of their families, of the people who work in baseball on the island, weren't just materially poorer for having lived in Castro's Cuba -- they were worse off, period. More than a million Cubans live in the U.S. as exiles, reflecting generations of refugees who fled Castro's takeover in 1959 and who still come here, risking their lives in the hands of smugglers or with faith in whatever rafts they build themselves. We don't know how many thousands have died trying to escape Castro's regime by crossing the open waters between Cuba and Florida.

Minoso's son, Charlie, said he expected that his late father's reaction would have remained consistent about Cuba after Castro, saying, "With Fidel Castro's passing, I feel that Dad's continued hope for a new era of Cuban-American relations, one that would directly better the quality of life for the Cuban people, would have never wavered.

"It was widely known that Dad was both Fidel's and [pre-revolution dictator] Fulgencio Batista's favorite baseball player, and his path crossed with theirs quite frequently in the height of Cuba's heyday. As the notorious Fidel era closes and a new chapter of Cuban history unfolds, I'm certain that Dad would welcome future opportunities for Americans, and the rest of the world, to experience the beautiful and vibrant culture of his homeland."

When I think of Cuba, I don't just think of baseball players. I think of what people have done despite Castro, of generous acts in response to his tyranny but also in response to the U.S. embargo on Cuba. I think of the friends who have packed suitcases full of medicines available only in the West and traveled there to help a nation of strangers. I think of Minoso, scrupulously apolitical, remembering his youth in the cane fields on a frosty February day in Chicago. I think of Kit Krieger, the Society of American Baseball Research member who organizes trips to Cuba to see the baseball played there and encourages his fellow travelers to think of ways to help the people playing.

For many of us, Cuba is an undiscovered country but also a source of so much baseball greatness that we cannot help but think about it. But because of Castro, we should never forget: Cuba is not a country that "gives" us that greatness. Cuban ballplayers come here themselves, sometimes by risking their lives alongside friends and family members in a desperate effort to get here, to embrace the opportunities -- and the freedoms -- that some of us might take for granted.

Those running the risks to come here have been the prey of smugglers looking to extort millions, as might be revealed in an upcoming trial in which MLB stars Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu have been called to testify about their experiences. They flee a nation where some estimates of political executions during Castro's regime number in the thousands. And they flee a nation whose political repression did not end when Fidel Castro stepped aside for his brother in 2008.

Danger, death, extortion -- and baseball? When we think about Fidel Castro's legacy, we should not be in a hurry to remember that last part, not without being honest about the rest, not without remembering the thousands of lives lost and the millions of lives changed far from any diamond, a specter that haunts the living dream of happier possibilities between Cuba and the U.S., now and into the future.

Christina Kahrl writes about MLB for ESPN. You can follow her on Twitter.