Friday, January 20, 2006

US Caves on Cuba World Baseball Decision



I had a feeling, they would. The prospect of Major League Baseball and sports writers everywhere blaming President Bush for the cancellation of an exciting World Baseball Classic matchup was too much. The purported money "reason" had vanished once Fidel announced that all proceeds were going to Katrina victims.

So now, it is announced that the Treasury Dept. reversed course and Cuba will be allowed to participate in the Classic, which begins March 9th. We can't wait.

Also, if you want I wrote a response to Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria's idiotic editorial blasting Cuban baseball in the New York Times.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How many Cuban baseball players do you predict will defect?

6:50 AM  
Blogger leftside said...

Zero, and you?

What is truly amazing is that there have not been more defections. When you consider that Cubans are the only people on earth who get automatic US citizenship and can be signed directly by teams for such ridiculous amounts of money. And then you add the hordes of Cuban-Americans there to facilitate defections and the likes of Joe Cubas sitting outside hotels with a Corvette, a blond and a million dollars...

A question for you - Do you think Cuba should go the route of the Dominican Republic and become a farm for MLB, where teenagers drop out of school and there is no domestic league to speak of?

9:53 AM  
Blogger jsb said...

There's hardly any mention of the Treasury Dept. decision in the cuban media. I wonder if Castro will actually let them go to Puerto Rico? Why the silence in the .cu press?

9:28 AM  
Blogger jsb said...

..yet Castro has made a statement to the international press.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/5280958

I'm not necessarily suggesting anything nefarious by the almost zero coverage of the positive development of Treasury's decision, just curious about why a nation wouldn't want to report the news to its people.

9:33 AM  
Blogger leftside said...

Granma announced the decision on Saturday... just not
in English


Why would Castro not allow his teams to go wherever
they were supposed to play? Of course, it is the US
who does the denials. Just this week we denied their
world class cyclists from the World Championships in
LA.

And we read this morning the Grammy's will likely see another snub:

Would you like to justify this infantile behavior?

10:51 AM  
Blogger jsb said...

"Why would Castro not allow his teams to go wherever
they were supposed to play?"

We'll see, as you say.

7:31 AM  

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