Peter Ueberroth Asks US Govt To Let Cuba Baseball Team Into US

December 28,2005

Peter Ueberroth Asks US Govt To Let Cuba Baseball Team Into US

NEW YORK -- U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth called on the American government to reverse its decision to deny Cuba's national baseball team permission to play in the United States, keeping it out of next year's World Baseball Classic.

Ueberroth, a former U.S. Major League Baseball commissioner and head of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, said last week's decision by the Treasury Department to deny Cuba a permit to play in the 16-team event will damage American efforts to host the Olympics in the future. Olympic host countries must guarantee all nations can participate.

Cuba is set to play against Puerto Rico, Panama, the Netherlands in Puerto Rico - a U.S. territory - in the first round.

"It is important to any future bid city from the United States that this be reversed," Ueberroth said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's disappointing. This will impact IOC members negatively. This may be the only example of a country prohibiting competition on an international scale."
(snip/...)

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com/article.asp?ArticleId=214799&CategoryId=14510

watching old International League games in Rochester, NY. I always loved it when Havana came to town, my Dad and I never missed a game. Then something happened........remember, I was only a kid of 9 years so the political stuff sailed right over my head. The Havana team never showed up again in Rochester. Of course now I'm well aware of why they dropped out of the League, but I think Cuba would be a great addition to our Major League Baseball. Cuba has some of the best ball players in the world and would be an instant force in the game.
Our country's Cuba policy has been a failure since it's inception. It's only hurt the people of Cuba, not Fidel. Yet we continue to "stay the course" with yet ANOTHER failed policy as if the outcome of doing the same stupid thing over and over would somehow change over time. Not likely.
This is a great idea although it has about as much chance of being instituted as Bush has suddenly becoming a great president, a champion of the "little guy". In other words, no chance at all. :(

BY LINDA ROBERTSON Miami Herald
...Mixing politics and sports is nothing new, but it rarely turns out well, as a chastened Adolph Hitler found out in 1936.

And turning athletes into political pawns always backfires. The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games caused bitterness, not reform.

The U.S. looks foolish excluding the world-renowned Cuban baseball team after allowing Cuba's soccer team to play in the Gold Cup here last summer. In 1999, Cuba played against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards and in Havana. In 1996, Cuba competed in the Atlanta Olympics.

Why, for 43 years, has the U.S. clung to an ineffective embargo? Once again, we're giving Castro a priceless propaganda platform. He can portray his small island as a victim of the bullying U.S.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/baseball/13489178.htm

the Miami Herald...

LA Olympics were boycotted as well...and how exactly was Hitler 'chastened'?

It was a PR coup - not a single nation boycotted in spite of such loud talk and basically annointed the Nazi's 'Aryan Only' policies in sport brought in 1933.

I guess the Miami Herald didn't want to broach the subject of 'nations restricting athletes' for political reasons since it is generally understood that only the US is likely to engage in such restrictions.

But it's good for the Herald to point out the inconsistencies of the Cuban sport policy.

What a bunch of crap.
We are worried about a minor dictator in the Caribbean while a giant is consuming our economy while obliterating its citizens liberties. What a sick, twisted world we live in.

"do as I say, not as I do."