World Baseball Classic...now Castro free!

The "World Baseball Classic" is certainly a joke. Scheduled for March, most veteran MLB players -- especially pitchers -- will be physically unready to compete (or their team's ownership will be unwilling to let them compete), making this little more than a series of exhibition games.

And Mike Piazza will be playing for Italy.

Apparently the Bush administration Treasury Dept. agrees.

The department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Major League Baseball on Tuesday that Cuba would not be allowed to have a team in the inaugural classic, which is scheduled to be played in March.

"We just received notice yesterday," Paul Archey, senior vice president for international baseball matters, said last night. "We're obviously disappointed in the decision, but we're going to continue to look into it and see what we need to do to have it changed, if at all."

Officials involved in the planning of the world tournament said the reason for keeping Cuba out was unclear, but it appeared to be linked to the possibility that if the tournament made a profit, the Cuban team could take American dollars home to its island, which is what the Cuban embargo is meant to prevent.

In 1999, the Cuban national team, as part of a home-and-home series, played the Orioles in Havana and in Baltimore. Cuba obviously gained money from those games.

"This came as a complete surprise to us," said Gene Orza, the No. 2 official of the players union, which has joined with Major League Baseball in organizing and sponsoring the event. "We thought the administration was supporting the event."

A Cuban ban could lead to a boycott of the classic by individual players from other Latin countries and by baseball federations in those countries.

If a boycott were to develop, it could jeopardize the classic. "I don't think that's likely," Orza said. "We haven't heard anything to that effect."

Archey said organizers have a backup plan in the event Cuba cannot play, but he said he wanted to pursue the matter "before we make any decisions."

Nothing is too small for this administration to inject political calculations...albeit tone-deaf ones. Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to let Castro make the decision not to let his players come to the U.S.? After all, the last thing he wants are his best players auditioning for Major League GMs and offered the temptation to defect. And what's with the timing? The "WBC" has been in the works for months, why'd the administration decide to act the hemispheric bully now? A casual fat joke?