Precisely six weeks before the scheduled start of the World Baseball Classic, which Commissioner Bud Selig calls the "most important international baseball event ever staged," organizers of the 16-nation tournament have secured the participation of most of the sport's biggest names, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. Such stars are the WBC's biggest hope for overcoming the mixture of ambivalence and skepticism that has greeted much of the tournament's run-up, at least domestically, among major league teams, television executives and the public.
However, the status of one would-be participant — the only one whose absence could derail the entire event — remains in limbo. Cuba has thus far been blocked from participating by the Bush administration's enforcement of economic sanctions against the country and its leader, Fidel Castro — a stance that, if upheld, could lead to cancellation of the tournament.
Officials involved in the WBC, a unique partnership among Major League Baseball, its players' association and USA Baseball, say they expect word from the Treasury Department perhaps as soon as today regarding the WBC's second application for a license for Cuba, and MLB President Bob DuPuy told reporters he is "guardedly optimistic" that application will be approved.
But others, viewing the standoff through the prism of American politics, do not share that optimism, as baseball finds itself increasingly and unwittingly in the middle of a fierce, generations-old political fight over U.S. policy toward Cuba.
"Frankly, I am not too surprised by the [Treasury] Department's decision, as there are few signs that Washington is prepared to rethink its policy toward Cuba," said Michael Shifter, a professor of Latin American politics at Georgetown University and the vice president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "This in my view is a great pity, since it certainly would be in the national interest to do so at this point.
"I am not sure what denying Cuban participation in the [tournament] is likely to accomplish, except to make some U.S. policymakers feel good and to further strengthen Fidel Castro."
The WBC first applied for a license for Cuba in late November, and it was denied on Dec. 13 by the Treasury Department, which determined it would be in violation of the 45-year-old Cuban embargo because the Castro regime would stand to benefit financially from its participation.
After Cuba promised to donate its proceeds from the tournament to victims of Hurricane Katrina, the WBC reapplied for a license on Dec. 22, and is still awaiting word from the Treasury Department, which is being advised on the matter by the State Department. Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said there was no timetable for a decision.
A denial of the license would not in itself kill the tournament, since organizers have lined up a potential replacement in Nicaragua. However, the International Baseball Federation (IBAF), the sport's ruling body, has said it would withdraw its sanction of the tournament if Cuba is not allowed in.
In such a scenario, any nation that participates would be subject to harsh penalties, including exclusion from future international competitions. Puerto Rico has already said it would not participate if the IBAF's sanction is withdrawn, and it is expected that other countries would follow suit.
One official involved in the WBC's planning acknowledged that in such a scenario the tournament could not go forward.
Paul Seiler, executive director of USA Baseball, said he was hopeful that, in the event Cuba's license was denied, the IBAF could be persuaded not to pull its sanction, thus allowing the tournament to proceed with Nicaragua in place of Cuba.
"Before we got to that point, some conversations would certainly take place," Seiler said. "That's the optimist in me. . . . The ramifications are too far-reaching."
However, Miquel Ortin, executive director of the IBAF, said the federation indeed would automatically pull its sanction if Cuba was excluded, citing the Olympic ideal -- expressed in the IBAF's own charter -- that international competition must be apolitical.
"We would not have it any other way," Ortin said in an e-mail reply to a reporter's questions. "But we are confident [of] not being obliged to take this action. . . . We trust that in the end, the principles of Sport and the Olympic Movement will prevail over any other conflicting regulations."
Part of the IBAF's insistence on Cuba's inclusion stems from the federation's desire -- shared by MLB -- to see baseball retained as an Olympic sport when its status comes up for review after the 2008 Beijing Games. Cuba's exclusion could damage the IBAF's standing in the Olympic community. Baseball is not on the program for the 2012 London Games.
The WBC's optimism regarding Cuba stems in part from the longtime ties between many MLB officials and President Bush, who was managing partner of the Texas Rangers before becoming governor of Texas.
"With the contacts baseball has in Washington," said one high-ranking tournament source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did want to jeopardize the chances of swaying the administration, "I'm confident we can get this resolved."
However, that viewpoint may underestimate the political pressures coming from the other side of the issue. The large community of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida -- where Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor -- votes overwhelmingly Republican, and there has been strong political pressure on the Bush administration to uphold the ban on Cuba's participation.
Banning Cuba "would be a small price to pay to remind the world that there is great oppression taking place in Cuba, and that the Cuban people are denied all freedoms," said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) in a telephone interview from his Miami office. "The team would become a propaganda machine for the [Castro] regime. . . . [Banning Cuba] was the right decision, and I hope [Bush] holds firm."
Adds Shifter: "U.S. policy [on Cuba] has long been driven by Miami's enormously influential exile community. For the Bush administration that community's hard-line stance toward dealing with the Castro government trumps any interest in cooperating with Major League Baseball."
Last month, Diaz-Balart appealed to Selig on the behalf of 17 professional baseball players originally from Cuba -- including Washington Nationals pitcher Livan Hernandez, who defected in 1995 -- to allow those players to form a team that would play in the tournament. The proposal was denied, MLB officials said, because the task of choosing team members falls to each invited country's baseball federation -- a policy that Diaz-Balart said "discriminates" against the group of Cuban exiles.
Critics of the Bush administration's stance point out that Cuba was permitted to participate in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer tournament in Seattle. In addition, in 1999, the Baltimore Orioles were allowed to play exhibition games against the Cuban national team in Havana and Baltimore.
Asked about that criticism, Millerwise, the Treasury spokesperson, pointed out that the Olympics and the CONCACAF tournament were organized by international organizations, not U.S. businesses such as MLB. "It's apples and oranges," she said.
As for the Orioles' games versus Cuba? "That was under a different administration," Millerwise said, "and there were looser policies in place at that time."
Other critics have accused the United States of being scared of seeing its best major leaguers lose to the powerful Cubans, who have won three of the last four Olympic gold medals. Castro himself alluded to this in a speech in Havana on Tuesday.
"We aren't afraid of anything," Castro said, as quoted by the Associated Press. "It's very difficult to compete against us in any area . . . not even in baseball do they want to compete with Cuba."
U.S. officials, however, say they want nothing more than to meet the Cubans on the baseball field.
"I want Cuba there because they're the best in the world," USA Baseball's Seiler said. "They're a true barometer of where we are as a team internationally. There's a little bit of that Red Sox-Yankees thing going on with us and them."
