March 3, World Baseball Classic Begins

This March 3rd, the first ever World Baseball Classic will take place and Cuba will be there. Cuba was finally allowed to play after agreeing to donate all earnings from the classic to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Now, it will be a legitimate tournament...the absence of Cuba definitely would have undermined the strength of the tournament and actually very likely would have brought the idea of a classic to a quick end since the International Baseball Confederation would have pulled the plug. Besides, look at the numbers, Cuba has won Olympic gold in 1992, 1996, and 2004 (lost in 2000, to the US). Recently the island as been forgotten in the shadow of its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, whose star products now control the MLB. So this Classic will really give the world the chance to gauge where Cuban baseball is at as it plays fully loaded teams that are usually missing in the Olympics. Has the machine decayed? What a statement Cuba would make if it sweeps the Classic: a baseball system that is as isolated and closed off as Cuba itself managed to rise above teams whose players were brought to stardom through financially deep developmental programs, most of which are backed by MLB teams. The pressure certainly will be on the Cuban national team to bring home a victory, because the forfeited prize money would be forgotten by the political and ideological currency it would give Castro.