Baseball and Politics
Base10 firmly believes that politics and sports are two separate realms which must be kept, well, separate. Unless of course it involves the Cuban national team, in which case politics and sports collide. Base10 is referring, of course, to Friday's stunner in the World Baseball Classic where Puerto Rico pummelled Cuba 12-2 and caused the "mercy rule" to be invoked ending the game in the 7th inning. Aside from the fact that Puerto Rico has its own national team that is not part of team USA (I guess commonwealths get their own teams), this was still a case of Americans beating the pants off of Cubans in baseball. Eat your heart out, Papi Fidel!

What made the win especially delicious was that it followed on the heels of an incident where a fan displayed a sign reading "Down With Fidel" during the Cuba Netherlands game last Thursday. The fan was confronted by an angry Cuban official who was escorted away by Puerto Rican police. The police officers reportedly had a nice talk with him explaining what the First Amendment was all about. What really got Papi Fidel riled was the fact that the game was broadcast to Cuba, thus allowing Cubans to see that not everyone is happy with Castro's rule. Heaven forbid that a regime should allow its media to portray its leaders in a bad light! USA Today had this to say about the incident:

The brouhaha gathered steam when Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma, called the sign-waving "a cowardly incident." Cuba's Revolutionary Sports Movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana, saying U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in "the cynical counterrevolutionary provocations."

One of the protesters who showed up in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana bore a sign that said: "Down with Bush." Star Cuban athletes were among hundreds of protesters. An official Cuban communique urged the Cuban team to "respond to the provocations with hits, home runs, strikes, outs."

While perhaps Cuban national team wanted to take this advice, the Puerto Rican team was the one getting all the hits, home runs, strikes and outs on Friday.
- posted by Base10 @ 10:26 AM