World Baseball Classic

According to CBS, Venezuela is offering to host Group C of the WBC, and is proposing that the final be played in Canada, to render moot the US ban on Cuba's participation in games played in the US and its territories.

Interesting move, considering that Venezuela is in Group D, which will be playing in Florida, and will not have the automatic home team draw for the games played in that country. Would Venezuelans turn out to watch the Netherlands play Puerto Rico or Panama? We assume that Cuba will draw a crowd wherever they are finally permitted to play, if only because the Bush administration is so stupidly playing the bully.

As Mark Bechtel at CNN/SI put it:

This isn't just a bad move from a baseball standpoint, it's also a remarkably arrogant one. And now Cuba, which had offered to donate any profits from its WBC appearance to Katrina victims, makes the U.S. look remarkably petty and Fidel Castro look like the good guy. It takes real political acumen to swing that.

Editors of small-town papers from Loveland, CO to Toledo, OH see the idiocy of this policy. My prediction? Cuba will play after a non-announcement from the Treasury Dept that it has reviewed the financial arrangements and is assured the Cuba will earn no money from its US appearances; Diaz-Balart will attempt some sort of media demonstration that will attract a hundred or so screamers and get lots of coverage on Fox News; and the Dominican Republic will win the title game in San Diego on March 20th.

(damn typos)