Castro OKs Cuba to play against US baseball stars

By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) – President Fidel Castro has given the
go-ahead for Cuba to play in the World Baseball Classic next
March, vowing a clash between Cuban amateur sport and American
professionalism that has lured away many Cuban stars.

The 16-nation World Cup-style baseball event is the first
international tournament to include major-league players and
will begin on March 3 in Tokyo and end in San Diego three weeks
later.

Cuban involvement had been in doubt for an event that will
be played mainly in the United States, Castro’s ideological foe
and a magnet for the defection of communist Cuba’s best players
attracted by multimillion-dollar contracts.

Talent scouts and Cuban exile community go-betweens are
expected to contact the better prospects on the Cuban team,
raising the risk of new defections.

“We can do it better and take on the major leagues. … For
each player that leaves, 10 better ones arise,” Castro said on
Wednesday night about the drain of Cuban talent

The list of defectors includes such big-league stars as
pitchers Jose Contreras and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez of the
World Series champion Chicago White Sox and Hernandez’s brother
Livan Hernandez, who pitches for the Washington Nationals.

Olympic champion Cuba has dominated international baseball
because the best American professional players seldom go to bat
for their country, so the unprecedented tournament in March
could decide which country is king of the sport.

Baseball was introduced to the Caribbean in Cuba a century
and a half ago by American sailors loading sugar. The sport is
a national passion on the island.

Cuba’s communist government does not allow professional
sport and even the top Cuban players earn meager wages. Many
dream of playing for big money in the United States.

A Cuban team last played in the United States in 1999 in an
exhibition game in Baltimore against the major-league Orioles.
None of the Cuban players defected.

CASTRO: ‘COUNT ON US’

“Yes, of course, we accept the challenge … count on us at
the party,” Castro said in a television appearance.

The World Baseball Classic is being organized by the
International Baseball Federation, Major League Baseball and
the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Cuba was preparing its team with players that were “better
than those who left,” Castro said.

He said that “some could not resist the millions of the
major leagues” and that baseball was the Cuban sport most hit
by desertions to the United States.

The last major defector was switch-hitting first baseman
Kendry Morales, Cuba’s best up-and-coming slugger who left Cuba
in June 2004 by crossing the Florida Straits in a motorboat
packed with other emigres.

Morales, 22, who had been dropped from Cuba’s national team
after an earlier attempt to defect, was quickly signed by the
Los Angeles Angels organization where he is playing in the
minor leagues.

Despite the constant loss of talent, Cuba took the gold
medal for baseball at the 1992, 1996 and 2004 Olympics, falling
only to the United States in the finals at the 2000 Olympic
Games in Sydney. It has won every IBAF World Cup since 1984.

Besides the United States and Cuba, the other countries
playing in March are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Canada,
South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Mexico,
Venezuela, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.