Cuban Response to WBC Omission

As a follow up to my views on Cuba being prevented from taking part in the upcoming World Baseball Classic I have just stunbled upon this letter which is the Cuban response to the US Treasury.

I think its points are well made and clear and certainly makes it clear how preposterous this decision is.

City of Havana, December 14, 2005

Mr. Paul Archey, First Vice President,
Baseball Major League,
New York, USA

Dear Archey:

Today, Wednesday afternoon we received a FAX from your office, informing us of a letter from Robert Warner, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) denying the Cuban national team participation in the World Baseball Classic.

The reasons alleged by the above-mentioned Office for that refusal are established in the shameful Regulation of the Control of Cuban Assets 31 CFR, section 515 of the Treasury Department.

For any half-rational person such a decision is absurd. Anger and political obstinacy are once again preventing the world from enjoying a genuinely representative universal baseball spectacular.

How can one talk of a World Baseball Classic when the Cuban team, the Olympic and World champion, is not represented?

We are defenders of baseball and of its significance for our peoples.

We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged along by the ultraconservative tendencies that characterize the current U.S. government.

Once again we are prepared to seek solutions and ways of evaluating the possible participation of our team.

Money is not the motive adduced by the OFAC for our interest in competing. We are a federation of a modest but dignified country; our only proposal is to cooperate so that baseball can continue to develop and attain its reinsertion in the Olympic Program in the near future. We have never competed for money.

With the objective of offering options, the Cuban Baseball Federation would be disposed to the money corresponding to its participation in the Classic to be destined to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Dear Mr. Archey, we should like to note that we appreciate as an ethic the position of the Major League and the Association of Major League Players, in respect to Cuba’s possible participation in the Classic.

Awaiting your response,

Yours sincerely,

Carlos Rodríguez Acosta
President