Cuban exile baseball players, lawmakers talk about forming team

 

BY OSCAR CORRAL

ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

 

Baseball and politics may not mix, but when it comes to allowing a team from communist Cuba to play in the U.S., there's no way to get around exile politics.

 

On Thursday, Congressman Lincoln D?az-Balart will be meeting with Cuban-born Major League Baseball players to discuss organizing a professional association so that Cuban defectors now playing for U.S. teams, along with Cuban-American players, can join together and play as a team to compete in professional tournaments, including the World Baseball Classic in March 2006.

 

Today's meeting comes after the federal government's controversial decision last week to deny Cuba a license to play in the upcoming classic. D?az-Balart wants Cuban exile ball players to represent Cuba at the games.

 

However, at least 80 members of Congress have signed letters to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary John Snow urging them not to take international politics to the ball field'' and to allow the Cuba team to play ball.

 

Among the ball players expected to be meeting with D?az-Balart and TV sports anchor Omar Claro today are Orlando ''El Duque'' Hernandez, Livan Hernandez, Bryan Pe?a and Eddie Oropesa.

 

D?az-Balart's proposal, supported by about a dozen members of Congress, was rejected last week by MLB, because the rules require teams to be represented by a national baseball federation.

 

''A team of free players, competing in a tournament with teams representing free peoples, is the best way to celebrate America's game on a world stage,'' the members supporting D?az-Balart's proposal wrote in their letter to Selig last week.

 

The players plan to meet this morning at D?az-Balart's Miami office.

Don't think it's possible, but it would be interesting to see if they'd be able to do it.

Won't happen just due to the fact that alot of the prominent cuban baseball players will not want to play with a jersey that says cuba on it....plus the fact that the WBC requires the country be backed the national federation. This is just a waste of time...Politics and sports should not be mixed...after all the year of Cuba sending their "best" players to the olympics against our semi-pro team/college kids, now is the chance for the US and other countries that got their a**es kicked to get back at them.