Boycott The "World" Baseball Classic?

The World Baseball Classic this coming March is an event that many of us baseball fans have penciled into our 2006 calendars.  Slowly the event is creeping into the Sports Media forefront and it should gain even more momentum as the college and NFL seasons wrap up.  With the winter meetings and the majority of the baseball off-season behind us, for baseball fans the WBC is the next thing to look forward to.  Small controversies have already begun with the debates ranging from Mike Piazza’s country of birth to the Yankees ability to withhold catcher Jorge Posada from the event.  While these issues are important to fans of the countries that these players seek to represent, the more pressing problem is the exclusion of Cuba from participating in the WBC.  This is something that has not been discussed with necessary urgency up to this point.   Cuba has a long tradition of baseball greatness and whatever your politics might be the exclusion of a country that has made such a significant impact on baseball throughout the world should be problematic to any baseball fan.  The shortsightedness of George Bush, himself the former owner of the Texas Rangers, to allow a political vendetta to exclude Cuba from participating in a World Baseball Classic is something that fans around the world should be challenging.  If the World Baseball Classic is to be set up as a yearly event, the exclusion of one country, by another for political reasons sets a dangerous precedent.  With many Latin American countries, notably Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina democratically electing presidents with strong anti-United States reputations, it seems likely that by 2009 the pool of eligible countries will have shrunk again, eliminating other countries with long reputations within the sport.      There are other reasons to resent this decision by the United States Treasury Department.  Peter Ueberroth, U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman, and himself a former baseball commish, stated recently that this would hurt the chances of the United States to host the Olympics again stating that this “may be the only example of a country prohibiting competition on an international scale.”  Ueberroth headed the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and worked with the Reagen administration to ensure that Cuba, who ultimately boycotted the competition, could participate.  Though the trade embargo on the small island nation prohibits entering into contracts where Cuban nationals have an interest, the CONCACAF Gold Cup earlier this year, in which Cuba was a participant, shows that with some negotiating we can get around the prohibitive measures in the embargo.  In this instance money was paid to Cuba through a third party group, not the United States directly.  Without offering to work towards making concessions so that Cuba could participate, the United States has infuriated other participating teams, most notably Peurto Rico which has pulled out as a host because of this decision.  

    Recently ESPN, The Magazine, ran an article stating that Cuba should not be allowed to participate because Castro “unfairly jails those that think freely.”  To think that other countries, let alone the one from where the author of the article writes, the United States, does not do the same is foolish and naïve.  We reside in a country where the Federal government refuses to commit to not using torture as a form of interrogation; where recent reports of wiretapping against citizens are confronted not with apologies but with contempt: that those who have uncovered these breaches of civil rights are aiding “the terrorists.”  Governments around the world enact policies that seem reprehensible to the common citizen and the United States is no different.  

What troubles me in this instance is not the hypocrisy alone, but rather the unilateral way that this decision was reached.  There was not even feigned consult with other participants, and if this indeed is to be the World Baseball Classic and not the United States Invitational Tournament, than that is problematic.  Castro has volunteered to donate the monies earned by his country to victims of hurricane Katrina, and the Players Association, along with MLB International, are pushing the U.S. Treasury Department to over turn this decision.  As fans of the game of Baseball we need to do what we can to help this happen.  I for one will be boycotting the United States Invitational Tournament until all countries become eligible to participate.  We can not allow our excitement over this first of its kind event to blind us to the larger ramifications involved with countries being excluded.  Cuba, as much as any country, has a tradition of baseball achievement and greatness.  Jose Contreras made his name on the international stage pitching for Cuba against the United States.  Though ESPN, The Magazine, offers that they do not want to give Cubans the chance to pull off what the American Hockey team did in 1980 against the Soviets, I believe that that is a shortsighted and narrow minded vision of the tournament and international sports in general.  What then after all is the point I wonder?