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 News from Around the Americas | January 2006 
Cuba Makes Cut for the Classic
 Jack Curry - NYTimes
| | Cuba, which beat Australia for the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics, will be denied profits from the World Baseball Classic. |
The field for the World Baseball Classic is finally complete after Cuba was granted a license to participate in the 16-team tournament when President Bush intervened and ordered his staff to settle the issue.
The tournament organizer's second attempt to get a license for Cuba from the Treasury Department was successful and eliminated a thorny complication, if not a fatal jolt, to the event. If Cuba had been denied again, the inaugural classic could have been jeopardized because the International Baseball Federation had threatened to withdraw its sanction if Cuba was left out.
Instead, after Major League Baseball and the players union helped revise the application to guarantee that Cuba would not make American money by playing, the Treasury Department approved the license yesterday. If Cuba made money from the tournament, which runs March 3-20, that would have violated the United States' trade embargo against the country.
Administration officials said the reversal of the position came after the president became directly involved. As a former partner in the Texas Rangers, he knew, they said, that there were ways to organize the high-profile games without aiding the government of Fidel Castro.
"The president wanted to see the matter resolved in a positive way," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "Our concerns were making sure that no money was going to the Castro regime, and that the World Baseball Classic would not be used by the regime for espionage. We believe those concerns have been addressed."
Aside from Cuba, the other 15 teams will make at least 1 percent of the net profits from the event, with those percentages escalating as teams advance. The champion will reap a 10 percent profit. But Cuba, a traditional international power and the gold medal winner in the 2004 Olympics, will get nothing.
While the Cubans said they would donate proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims, it will not actually happen that way because that would mean they still would have received American money before transferring it. Instead, the World Baseball Classic will handle the money Cuba would have earned and will make the donation to make sure no money flows through Cuba.
In addition to the concerns about revenue, Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the State Department, explained that the Treasury Department also had questions about the delegation that would travel with the baseball team and "any potential for those individuals to engage in activities not related to the baseball classic, shall we say."
When the Cubans travel to international baseball games, they typically have more security guards than players and say they need the additional manpower to prevent defections. It was unclear how many visas Cuba will receive for personnel who are not players or coaches, but McCormack said any concerns about Cuba's delegation were addressed in the second application.
Before Cuba's participation in the tournament was assured, there were passionate expressions both for and against allowing the country to participate. Now that Cuba's appearance is definite, that dialogue continued percolating, especially among lawmakers.
In Miami, Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American who lobbied the Bush administration to bar the Cuban team, called the decision to let it participate "lamentable and unfortunate."
Diaz-Balart, who last month proposed that a team of athletes who defected from Cuba play instead, said that it would be difficult for Cuban team members to defect during the event because their government would monitor them closely. "It will be tough for the players," said Diaz-Balart, a Republican. "But nevertheless I am inviting them to seek freedom."
Other Cuban-Americans in Miami were more supportive of the reversal, saying that fighting with Castro over baseball was a waste of time.
"This was certainly not a worthwhile battle," said Joe Garcia, a political strategist for Democrats and the former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "What do you gain - that a few ballplayers can't play ball? This was a silly resistance and just not worth it."
Ramon Saul Sanchez, a Cuban-American leader who recently ended an 11-day hunger strike after the White House promised to meet with Cuban-Americans to address concerns about immigration policy, said he, too, was happy about the reversal.
"We can't play the same game Castro plays," Sanchez said. "I would like to see Castro give visas to exiled athletes who want to play in Cuba. That doesn't happen because he puts up barriers. But we shouldn't be putting up those same barriers. Sports should be free."
For his part, Diaz-Balart said, "It was a small price to pay to remind the world of the oppression of the Cuban people for 47 years."
Diaz-Balart said he had talked to the Bush administration about the second attempt to get a license for the Cuban team. He would not say whether he had discussed it with Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother.
Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said he had been talking with the Treasury Department for at least the past six weeks about the tournament, but was not consulted on the final decision. "It was too bad to cave to Major League Baseball's wishes when it really wasn't the right thing to do," Martinez said. "We would not have thought of playing with an apartheid South African team."
Even though Cuba will not earn any proceeds, Diaz-Balart said the players would receive per diems and warned that baseball officials should be careful that money does not reach the Cuban government. Diaz-Balart also said it was "sad" that the players union supported the effort to get Cuba a license.
Commissioner Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players association, issued statements in which they thanked government officials for their cooperation and assistance in securing the license.
"Now, with Cuba's entry in the tournament approved, the World Baseball Classic promises to be an historic event and will guarantee our fans the greatest possible competition among the best players in the world," Selig said.
Paul Archey, baseball's senior vice president for international business operations, and Doyle Pryor, a union lawyer, met with several Cuban officials last week to discuss the potential size of their traveling party and other subjects that had been raised by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a branch of the Treasury Department. After they delivered the answers to the office and detected a positive response, the officials grew more optimistic that Cuba would eventually get a license.
Cuba will play in Pool C in the four-pool tournament, along with Puerto Rico, Panama and the Netherlands, and is scheduled to face Panama in its first game, in San Juan, P.R., on March 8. The deadline for provisional 60-man rosters was Tuesday, so the Cubans will be asked to present theirs soon.
Reporting for this article was contributed by David E. Sanger, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and John H. Cushman Jr. from Washington and Abby Goodnough and Terry Aguayo from Miami. |
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