No Cuba = No World Baseball Classic

[rorod]

a baseball tournament without Cuba is retarded as some of the best players come from there

 

The International Baseball Federation has sent a letter to Major League Baseball, the Players Association and the 16 countries or territories involved in the World Baseball Classic that the organization will revoke its sanction of the March tournament if the U.S. government doesn't approve Cuba's participation in it.

MLB spokesman Rich Levin confirmed on Friday that baseball was in receipt of the letter that was faxed and signed by Aldo Notari, the IBAF president. The story first appeared in the Toronto Sun on Thursday.

 

In the case that Cuba is not allowed to play, the tournament, scheduled for March 3-20 in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Japan, would be in serious jeopardy because all of the other participants would be under threat to bow out without IBAF sanction.

 

MLB reapplied to the U.S. Treasury Dept. on Dec. 22 for a license so Cuba can play. Baseball officials are still waiting for word and Bob DuPuy, MLB's president and chief operating officer, said this week that he's "guardedly optimistic" that the department will reverse its initial decision.

 

Earlier in December, the Treasury Dept. denied MLB's application, because the long-standing economic embargo of that island nation "prohibits entering into contracts in which Cuba or Cuban nationals have an interest," a spokesman for that department said.

 

But in the reapplication, any funds earmarked for Cuba would be donated to charity. Subsequently, Cuban president Fidel Castro said that money would be given to victims of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. gulf coast this past September.

 

During the Clinton administration, the Cubans were allowed to participate in the 1996 Summer Olympics at Atlanta and three years later the Cuban national baseball team travelled to Baltimore to play the Orioles in an exhibition game at Camden Yards. The Cubans won the baseball gold medal in Atlanta and have captured three of the four since baseball became a medal sport in 1992.

 

Since the license for Cuba to participate in the WBC was denied, pressure has been exerted publicly by Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Puerto Rico's amateur baseball federation sent a letter to the IBAF saying that it would not host the first two rounds of the tournament in San Juan as planned if Cuba wasn't allowed to play. Cuba is slated as a participant there along with Puerto Rico, Panama and the Netherlands.

 

Venezuela said it was opposed to Cuba's ouster from the tournament and suggested hosting those rounds in Caracas as a way of circumventing the problem.

 

But the IBAF has now even overruled that suggestion.

 

The IBAF cited a portion of the Olympic charter, which states that "any form of discrimination to a country or person on grounds of race, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with the Olympic movement," as grounds for removing its sanction of the tournament if the U.S. bars Cuba from competing.

 

Nations that play despite the sanction would be subject to penalties in the future regarding other IBAF sanctioned international events. The IBAF hosts its own baseball World Cup every other year and sanctions teams to participate in the Olympics. The IBAF is a member of the International Olympic Committee and must adhere to those standards.

 

After much negotiations between MLB, the union and the IBAF, the umbrella group for all the world's baseball federations, sanctioned the tournament in 2004. More than 100 baseball federations are members of the IBAF.

[Fishfan79]

play it anyways screw IBAF .. There is no more olympics baseball anyways

[The_Punisher]

No Cuba, no world baseball classic, good move! I want to see my team play!

[Madman81]

I want to see my team play!

 

So root for the USA. You live here, no?

[prinmemito]

I want to see my team play!

 

So root for the USA. You live here, no?

 

So what if he lives here? He can call any team "his team." This is a free country.

[Guest Juanky]

No Cuba, no world baseball classic, good move! I want to see my team play!

Were you born here?

 

Because if you were, you're being very hypocritical. You said ARod should play America, but you're gonna root for Cuba? :banghead . Nevermind the whole you're rooting for the people that kicked you out of the island thing.

[JJ24]

i just dont get it sometimes. Im gonna get ripped for this but ill still post it. If you live in the U.S you should support them no matter where youre from. If you were born in cuba and you live here you should root for The US or go back to cuba beacuse the reasons you are here are obvious so why should you support them. Then this goes back to the people who sport jamacian cuban dominican flags on the cars and wave their flag around in our country. If you want to support your country then you should go live there and if you cant take the heat in that country and have to come to America then you damn well better be putting us before your country that you left.

 

As for the baseball thing who cares it doesnt count

[prinmemito]

i just dont get it sometimes. Im gonna get ripped for this but ill still post it. If you live in the U.S you should support them no matter where youre from. If you were born in cuba and you live here you should root for The US or go back to cuba beacuse the reasons you are here are obvious so why should you support them. Then this goes back to the people who sport jamacian cuban dominican flags on the cars and wave their flag around in our country. If you want to support your country then you should go live there and if you cant take the heat in that country and have to come to America then you damn well better be putting us before your country that you left.

 

As for the baseball thing who cares it doesnt count

 

 

This is a free country. People should feel free to do whatever they wish so long as they're not breaking the law. Rooting for another country in a sporting event does not mean someone isn't appreciative of this country and all of the opportunities that are available to them here.

 

Question, if you moved to England to live and work would you root for England against the US in the World Cup or the Olympics?

[JJ24]

i wouldnt move to england

[Guest Juanky]

Pretty hard to defend your opinion when you just dodge any counters.

[JJ24]

Im not dodging any counters i was just stating that i wouldnt move to england and i wouldnt move anywhere outside the united states. There is no possible correct way to anwser the question beacuse either way I will be wrong to someone on this board and then have to awnser even more hypothetical questions.

 

But have you ill awnser, If i moved from say America to England i would root for England beacuse that is my home country and where i live, where the players come from and the system of government that controls me.

 

Satisfied?

[prinmemito]

Fine. You do as you please. We can do as we please. Don't be so damn sensitive about it.

 

I should add that immigrants in this country often have very strong connections to their countries of origin - family, friends, a history. It's not that easy to just say, "I'm American, I will forget where I came from." It's human nature to continue to feel a bond to a community that you have so much history with and connections to. That's why we often say someone is a Cuban-American or Puerto Rican-American - we're acknowledging their background. In a lot of ways, it's like a New Yorker that moves to South Florida and continues to root for the Yankees. Is that a terrible thing? I don't think it is.

[Guest Juanky]

But have you ill awnser, If i moved from say America to England i would root for England beacuse that is my home country and where i live, where the players come from and the system of government that controls me.

That's fine. You're an American living in England, but you'll root for England. That's your perogative. People that go to another country, for the most part, don't automatically assume the nationality they live under. You were raised with American culture, but all of a sudden you're going to be British? You honestly expect to make the switch, just drop everything you've had before, and it's on?

 

Let's say you do make the move to England. You can root for the UK all you want, but the people there will wonder why you aren't pulling for the United States. Since, you know, you were educated in the American system with an American culture.

[QuickGold]

Where was the IBF when the Olympics wants to pull baseball?

[fanofthefish]

I wish there was some way that Cuba could play in this tourny, I would love to see them get their a$$es handed to them by Venezuela, the Dominican and the the good old USA.

[HanleyDavidson]

No Cuba, no world baseball classic, good move! I want to see my team play!

Were you born here?

 

Because if you were, you're being very hypocritical. You said ARod should play America, but you're gonna root for Cuba? :banghead . Nevermind the whole you're rooting for the people that kicked you out of the island thing.

 

Quit being an ignorant slut let the man root for Cuba he has Cuban blood in him and so do I and im rooting for Cuba aswell.

 

I wish there was some way that Cuba could play in this tourny, I would love to see them get their a$$es handed to them by Venezuela, the Dominican and the the good old USA.

 

 

 

LOL wait until cuba is a free country then u'll see many more cuban players in the MLB.

[Guest Juanky]

Come back at me with an insult.....good argument!

 

I must bow out since I was so intelligently refuted.

[Skully]

You know what.. my whole family is cuban. My sisters, cousins, and I are the first generation born in the US. And I have to agree with JJ24 100%. I don't get it. People come here because their home countries are a piece of sh*t, yet they still wave their flags and root against the US.

 

For those jumping on JJ24 for the whole England thing, it's the exact reason why he said he wouldn't move there to begin with. But you guys didn't like that answer, so he then replies and it's still not good enough.. I'm with him, I will always root for the US. Don't ask me if I'd root for England, cause I would never move there. If I got offered a job to work overseas, I wouldn't take it, cause I don't want to live anywhere else.

 

People that live here and root for other countries, are not here by choice. They are here because this was the country that gave them freedom and the life they wanted. My parents give me crap for saying stuff like this, but it's the truth. The US is what is giving everyone a chance to be who they wanted to be..

[Strike 3]

New York Times

January 11, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

Castro at the Bat

By ROBERTO GONZ?LEZ ECHEVARR?A

New Haven

 

PRETTY much everyone - Major League Baseball players, the sport's world governing body, Democrats in Congress, sports columnists, foreign politicians and even many fans - has ridiculed the United States for refusing to allow the Cuban national team to travel to American soil to play in the inaugural World Baseball Classic this spring. I appreciate the fans' desire to see some of the finest players in the world, but it hardly stretches the truth to say that those who want Cuba to participate are asking to be entertained by a team of slaves.

 

Consider this: the option not to play in the tournament, which has been exercised by the Yankees' Hideki Matsui among others, is not available to Cuban players - if the government tells them to play, they must. On the other hand, the regime can suspend a player from "Team Fidel," as the national team is often called, simply out of suspicion that he might defect. This happened to Orlando Hern?ndez, before he managed to escape in a boat and eventually find fame with the Yankees.

 

In this, of course, players are no different from ordinary Cubans, who are subject to preventive arrest under a law known by the horrendous euphemism of "peligrosidad predelictiva," which translates roughly to "dangerousness likely leading to crime." Players are also not allowed to make critical remarks about the government to the foreign press, an act prohibited by a law known as "ley mordaza," or the "gag law."

 

During their regular season, the Cuban players are not allowed to choose a team; they must play for the squad in the district where they reside or not at all. They have no unions and no agents. And they must engage in the institutionalized hypocrisy (copied from the former Soviet Union) of being amateurs, temporarily away from their jobs. The result is that their pay is meager and that they are under total control of the state's Orwellian sports bureaucracy.

 

And, of course, they cannot leave the country to play elsewhere. If they manage to escape, they cannot set foot in Cuba again for five years, and their families are often subject to harassment by government-supported mobs, called brigadas de acci?n r?pida ("quick response brigades"), that throw stones, eggs and other debris at their houses.

 

The arguments for Cuba's participation range from the puerile to the perverse. Peter Angelos, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, has accused the United States of "picking on" a little country in language worthy of the playground. Since when does the size of a country matter when it comes to its importance, or its repressiveness? Mr. Angelos also sat next to Fidel Castro when his team played an exhibition game in Havana in 1999 and promised he would refuse to sign any Cuban defectors.

 

Others claim that the American stance is dictated by exiles in Miami who lost property in Cuba when Fidel Castro took power in 1959. This is contemptible on two counts: it assumes that Cuban-Americans base their opposition to the dictatorship on greed rather than on personal and political ethics; and it ignores the fact that the number of exiles who lost property in Cuba nearly five decades ago is by now quite small. The Cuban exile community spans the political, social and racial gamut; it includes not a few members of the old Cuban Communist Party. All have endured untold hardships to become economically self-sufficient in America.

 

Besides, these Cubans are American citizens; as such, they are entitled to try to influence foreign policy in the same way any other group does. In exercising that right, they can and do influence elections, which in turn influence American policy toward Cuba - a delicious irony because the Cuban regime has of course never been legitimized by free elections.

 

And for those who say keeping the Cubans out of the tournament is another example of American ignorance, consider the racist aspect of Cuban sport: the squad is composed almost entirely of black Cuban men, toiling for the glory of the Maximum Leader and his macho, white oligarchy.

 

Every time that a foreign partner is duped into financing his crumbling economy (with the Soviet Union gone, Hugo Ch?vez's Venezuela is paying the bills), Fidel Castro clamps down on any incipient free enterprise in Cuba, condemning his people to appalling living conditions, while he and his associates enjoy the pleasures of unrestrained power. Are people so eager for a good baseball game that we are willing to overlook 47 years of totalitarian oppression?

 

Roberto Gonz?lez Echevarr?a, a professor of Hispanic and comparative literature at Yale, is the author of "The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball."

[Skully]

Wow.. thanks for posting, Strike3.. This is the reason I don't think Cuba should be allowed to play either. I'm sticking with my US government on this one.

[Strike 3]

Wow.. thanks for posting, Strike3.. This is the reason I don't think Cuba should be allowed to play either. I'm sticking with my US government on this one.

 

I agree. Castro's Cuba is not my family's Cuba. I always root for the US. My parents went through a lot and always taught me that this is the greatest country in the world and we were lucky to be here.

[MrAndMrsFish]

TOKYO, Jan 11, 2006 ? (AFP) ? Cuba is likely to stay in the inaugural 16-nation World Baseball Classic despite US moves to bar the communist state from profiting out of the event, baseball legend Tommy Lasorda said Wednesday.

 

The US Treasury Department said last month that it would be illegal for Cuba to take part in the international tournament because of the more than four-decade-old US embargo against Havana.

 

But Major League Baseball, which is organizing the event, has reapplied for permission to let Cuba play after the island's leader Fidel Castro pledged to donate proceeds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

 

"Now they want to give the money to get to the victims of the Katrina flood. So I think eventually it's going to happen,'' said Lasorda, who is in Japan as the ??ambassador'' of the competition.

 

"I believe that they are going to be able to play in this Classic,'' the former Los Angeles Dodgers skipper said.

 

"I don't think they (the United States) are trying to ban the team but, in my opinion, I think they are trying to stop them from coming in here and making money,'' he said.

 

The Cuban baseball team took gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics and is said to be the strongest amateur team in the world.

 

The World Baseball Classic, set for March 3-20 in the United States, Puerto Rico and Japan, was to bring together national teams from 16 top baseball-playing nations.

 

The schedule has Cuba playing all of the games in their pool in Puerto Rico, a US commonwealth. Cuba is grouped against Panama, the Netherlands and then Puerto Rico itself.

 

If Cuba advances, they would play the semis or the final in California.

 

 

 

 

Now for someone reason sounds good that Castro would donate the money but I don't see that happening I think it is just away for Cuba to get into the tourney.

[Guest Juanky]

Wasn't that offer on the table weeks ago?