USA blocks Cuba to participate in World Baseball Classic-Cuba
2022.12.07 13:26
USA blocks Cuba to participate in World Baseball Classic-Cuba
Budrigannews.com – Cuba’s vice foreign minister said on Wednesday that the United States is preventing some of the country’s best players from participating in the World Baseball Classic. This is the latest dispute over a sport that is popular in both countries.
Last month, Cuba asked a number of players who had left the Caribbean island, which has long been known for its baseball talent, to play for their home country in the World Baseball Classic in March 2023. Others contributed independently.
In a nation that has long branded defectors as traitors who abandoned their homeland, Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said that the development was a “positive step.”
However, he stated that despite authorizing Cuba’s participation in the Classic, the United States had not yet approved U.S.-based Cuban players competing alongside their home nation’s team.
In an interview in Havana, de Cossio told Reuters, “Everything to do with Cuba is prohibited in the United States.” traveling, having a drink, conducting business, and even playing baseball if you live in the United States.”
“That is the situation that ballplayers trained in Cuba face today, who say they are willing to play with their home country team and play for the big leagues in the United States.”
Reuters inquired, but the State Department of the United States did not immediately respond.
Business and financial dealings with Cuba are prohibited or made more difficult by sanctions imposed by the United States after the end of the Cold War. Under those rules, a Cuban baseball player can’t sign with a US team without leaving their home country.
As a direct consequence of this, Cuba’s baseball talent has left the country in unprecedented numbers over the past ten years, depleting dugouts and undermining the country’s sense of pride.
In excess of 650 Cuban ballplayers have surrendered to the US and somewhere else throughout recent years alone, as per state-run media reports.
Cuba’s gifted ballplayers helped the country win gold medals at the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, Atlanta in 1996, and Athens in 2004. However, the country failed to qualify for the first time for the 2020 games in Tokyo.
On March 8, Cuba is expected to play its first classic match in Taiwan.
