The much-touted, pueblo-to-pueblo exchanges between Cuba and the United States have raised more fences than they have built bridges.

What was supposed to be the start of meaningful interaction has turned out to be neither meaningful nor interactive -- unless you consider a body slam by a Cuban umpire of an exile picketer in Baltimore's Camden Yards to be a diplomatic breakthrough.

Monday night's game between the Baltimore Orioles and Cuba's national team only continued the shallow exercise in straits-crossing that began March 28 with a game on the island.

In Havana, where Orioles owner Peter Angelos had envisioned a historic, embargo-straining, people-to-people celebration, the Castro government saw to it that the unchecked masses got nowhere near the stands. The regime turned the Latinoamericano stadium into one giant VIP room.

Havana's hoi polloi missed some great moments in U.S.-Cuba connectedness. One TV news crewman fortunate enough to score a visa and a spot in the stadium says he saw actor Woody Harrelson light up a joint during The Star-Spangled Banner. He could not say, however, whether the American celeb shared his smoke with any nearby Cubans.

It appears the Orioles management brought back more than cigars from Havana. They brought back Cuban-style rules. To discourage protests at this week's game, they forbade their own countrymen from buying seats in clusters. But they placed no such restrictions on the visiting Cubans, who made all the commotion they desired.

The flight of banner-waving planes was restricted, for the same bogus reasons of political climate control.

Instead of a genuine grass-roots exchange, there were bodyguards and barbed regulations designed to keep us apart, not bring us any closer to the people of Cuba.

So what's the point? Those of us who believe in genuine people-to-people contact have been left to ponder a mockery.

There's been no real discourse here. I have no doubt that good intentions inspired these U.S.-Cuba exchanges. But these intentions were quickly torpedoed by Cuba's political savvy and the lack of courage from the Americans to tread deeper into Cuba's reality.

What do we have here? We have folk singer Bonnie Raitt, one of the U.S. musicians who participated in the Music Bridges project, which coincided with the first Orioles-Cuba game. Upon her return, she does the Late Late Show  with Craig Kilborn and gushes that Fidel Castro kissed her cheek. She lifts a fist to a Cuba-oblivious audience and says something like, ``Go on, Fidel!''

You have ``contact'' happening in a capsule, not in a country. What's the point in reaching out and touching someone in Havana when you know the hand you clasp belongs not to the casual citizen but to the comandante?

That's the problem with poorly executed exchange efforts -- they leave the people who matter out in left field.

The truly important exchanges going on between Cuba and the States are happening in the great political disconnect: jam sessions, periodic salons, off-the-record visits, old-fashioned family reunions. In these, the embargo is invisible and Castro is irrelevant. And these contacts are fruitful because they are not bogged down by the guataca  factor -- the obligatory ego-stroking.

The exchange organizers should take a cue from us. Let's not forget that this exile community pumps more millions into Cuba's economy than do most independent nations. We reach out and touch Cubans every day, even when no one watches from the stands.