Through Commissioner Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball has washed its hands of the controversial issue of admitting so-called deserters to the Cuba team who will attend the upcoming World Classic.
“There are rules that apply to international events like the World Classic,” Manfred said. to the Baseball Writers Association of America in statements quoted by the AP. “One of those rules is that the federation, the Cuban Baseball Federation, controls who is on their team.”
In this way, MLB has admitted its inability to encourage former and current Major League players who left Cuban teams to represent the Island in the highest baseball tournament at the national team level, a fundamental objective of the Association of Professional Baseball Players of Cuba (ACPBP).
Manfred recalled that MLB cannot change the eligibility rules established by the national governing body. -which does not take into consideration the athletes who escape from the ranks of the insular team-, and the Association has not been slow to publicly maintain that the Commissioner “deceived us.”
It’s a statement, the entity criticized Manfred’s positionalleging that he had promised “the celebration of exhibition games of our independent team against the US, DR and PR teams, in the Los Marlins park, the weekend before the start of the WBC in March 2023 ”.
The text of the ACPBP adds that “two weeks ago they gave us a preview of a possible momentous announcement that would be made during the All-Star Game, although they asked us to remain silent in the meantime, when In fact, Manfred and MLB were negotiating with the Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB), as its president, Juan Reinaldo Pérez, confirmed on Cuban TV.”.
Finally, the Association denounced “Manfred’s complicity with an entity that is not independent at all”, and warned Cuban-American senators and congressmen of the possibility “that a new pact between MLB and FCB is in the makingwhen the conditions by which the previous agreement was thrown down, in reality, have not changed”.
Cuba was located in the group A of the opening round of the 2023 World Baseball Classic (March 9 to 21 of next year) along with Chinese Taipei, Italy, the Netherlands and a squad yet to be determined.
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