Field of Pigs

Almost immediately after President Bush admitted that the decision to go to war in Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, the administration showed some more faulty intelligence by trying to regroup around the old foreign policy standard of picking on Cuba.

Cuba's baseball team has been denied a permit to enter the United States (and Puerto Rico) which denies the defending Olympic and World Cup Champions the right to compete in the upcoming World Baseball Classic (March 3 - 20). For those of you who don't follow baseball, imagine if Team Canada was barred from playing in the U.S. during the World Cup of Hockey, and you'll get some idea of how it impacts baseball's first ever best-on-best tournament.

There's a marked hypocrisy to barring Cuba, but allowing Venezuela and China to take the field. Hugo Chavez is not only Fidel Castro's best friend among world leaders, he's also the target for a Pat Robertson fatwa. As for China, most of the anti-Castro/Helms-Burton rainbow is coloured by laments over human rights. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think those cigars are made in slave labour camps, and I don't remember students between run down by tanks in downtown Havana.

This page contends that if the tournament wasn't being staged in an election year, the Cubans would be taking the field. The signals I'm stealing from the Bush dugout point directly to Florida, home to the infamous bloc of anti-Castro Cuban expatriates who hit way above their electoral weight. As you recall, Florida went narrowly to George W. Bush in 2004, and in 2000, it went to Al Gore. In barring the Cubans, brother Jeb can move into scoring position for 2008.

Major League Baseball is looking at appealing to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (a division of the Treasury Department). At this late an inning, MLB is more likely to sacrifice the Cubans. Baseball needs to preserve their anti-trust exemption, and to keep the congressional drug-sniffing dogs away the next time somebody hits 60 homes runs in a season.

This page calls barring the Cubans a definite balk: Castro can now claim that the U.S. invoked a technicality to avoid losing to Cuba at the tournament. If anyone else besides the U.S. wins the first World Classic title, what's going to stop them from taking up a challenge from Cuba to put that title on the line in Havana or anywhere else Helms-Burton doesn't apply?