Baseball Is Eyed by Congress Over Plan To Let Cuba Play

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – Baseball is in Congress’s crosshairs again – and this time it’s not performance-enhancing drugs, but Communist Cuba’s participation in an upcoming international tournament sponsored by Major League Baseball that is under fire from Capitol Hill.


Cuban-American leaders in Congress are urging the league’s commissioner, Allan “Bud” Selig, to rescind an invitation to the Castro dictatorship to field a team for the league’s inaugural World Baseball Classic. The members of Congress want instead to allow free Cubans to represent the island nation. The Bush administration, too, is being pressed to deny the league’s application for a license that would permit Cuba – a State Department-identified state sponsor of terrorism, subject to a Treasury embargo – to participate in the tournament.


The first World Baseball Classic is an 18-day, four-round international tournament established and sponsored by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. According to the league, the tournament, to be held in March, will feature 16 teams from North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Latin America, and will be played in Tokyo, San Juan, Florida, Arizona, and California.


Castro’s Cuba was among the 16 countries invited to the tournament because of its membership in the International Baseball Federation, which has sanctioned the World Baseball Classic, and because of the quality of its baseball program, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, Richard Levin, told The New York Sun yesterday.


Invitations to the tournament, Mr. Levin said, were not sent to all 110 member nations of the IBAF, but “just to representative nations that would be able to field teams that would be competitive.”


The Castro regime’s acceptance of the invitation was confirmed only last week. During a five-hour appearance on state television earlier this month in which Mr. Castro discussed the tournament, the Associated Press reported, Mr. Castro denounced Cuban players “who cannot resist the millions of the major leagues” and said that baseball “is the sport in which we have been beaten the most” by defections, but added: “When one leaves, another 10 better players emerge.”


Outrage over Mr. Castro’s involvement in the World Baseball Classic led Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican of Florida, to urge Mr. Selig to allow some of the defectors little-missed by Mr. Castro to represent Cuba in the upcoming tournament, rather than a team chosen by the dictatorship.


In a letter sent to the commissioner late last week, Mr. Diaz-Balart wrote: “It is difficult to believe, Mr. Selig, that MLB would have invited a team from apartheid-era South Africa to participate in a tournament. Yet you have invited a totalitarian dictatorship which has murdered thousands and imprisoned hundreds of thousands for the ‘crime’ of supporting freedom and democracy.”


“It is my understanding,” the congressman continued, “that during the 2005 MLB season, there were 22 Cubans or Cuban-Americans on major league rosters and 62 such players on minor-league rosters. Surely these Cubans can form a team to compete for their home country. Many such players, I am certain, would be honored to represent Cuba, and not Cuba’s oppressors, in the WBC.”


Communist China will participate in the tournament, but the World Baseball Classic will also include a free Chinese team competing for Taiwan.


According to tournament rules published on Major League Baseball’s Web site, a player may represent a country of which he is a citizen; of which he is a permanent legal resident; in which he was born; of which one parent is or was a citizen, or in which one parent was born.


Mr. Levin said yesterday that he was not aware of the congressman’s letter, adding that it was up to the participating national federations to select their players. “We have no control over who plays for each of the national federations,” Mr. Levin said. “They pick themselves.” In Cuba’s case, the nation’s team will be selected by the state-controlled Federacion Cubana de Beisbol.


Mr. Levin declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Diaz-Balart’s letter, but said the league wants Cuba to play in the tournament. “In our view, this is an athletic event, not a political event,” the spokesman said.


Cuba’s participation, Mr. Levin cautioned, was contingent on pending approvals from the Treasury Department, which is also embroiled in the dispute.


Mr. Diaz-Balart also wrote last week to Treasury Secretary Snow, asking him to reject Major League Baseball’s request for a license that would permit Cuba to receive money from the World Baseball Classic.


Mr. Levin told the Sun that the national federations, including Cuba’s, “would be getting some funding from the tournament.” Such transfers would require the approval of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees enforcement of America’s embargo against the Castro regime.


Approving the license, Mr. Diaz-Balart wrote to Secretary Snow, “would be in direct violation of U.S. policy. This license would allow a State Sponsor of Terrorism to use U.S. currency to finance its machinery of oppression.”


Yesterday a Treasury Department official told the Sun that the department could neither confirm nor deny the license request’s approval, but added: “Anything that would result in money going to the regime would be very, very carefully vetted.” One observer familiar with the license discussions said it was very unlikely that Castro’s Cuba would participate in the tournament because, while the Bush administration had not yet made an announcement, it was expected that the license requests would be denied.


In the meantime, another Cuban-American member of Congress supportive of Mr. Diaz-Balart’s actions, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, warned of the inhumane treatments that would await Cuba’s World Baseball Classic team.


“Castro uses baseball as a propaganda vehicle,” Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said, “and surrounds Cuban players with round-the-clock security so they are unable to defect in the U.S.”


“Castro,” the congresswoman added, “also forces the families of players to stay on the island to ensure that the athletes will come back. They are not free to decide their fate.”


If it participates, the Cuban team will play the first rounds of the tournament against teams from Panama, the Netherlands, and Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico. If Cuba’s baseball team, which has won gold medals in three of the last four summer Olympics, advances to the semi-final and final rounds, it will play at San Diego’s PETCO Park.


The New York Sun

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