Yesterday, the government of Cuba announced that Cuban athletes would henceforth be permitted to join the professional sports leagues of other nations, ending a half-century-old ban based on the idea that professional sports are unsuited to a country founded on socialist ideals.
"I'm excited. I'm from Cuba. I'm happy for the guys from my country to play the best baseball in the world," said Milwaukee Brewers infielder Yuniesky Betancourt, a Cuban defector who left his homeland aboard a speedboat in 2003.
Surely Mr. Betancourt isn't the only sports fan excited about a whole new pool of potential players hitting the field, particularly baseball players, coming from a long and storied tradition of the diamond. MLB here we come, right?
Not necessarily.
"Our policy has not changed. Cuban players need to be unblocked by a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control in order to play for the MLB," said John Sullivan, spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "In order to qualify, the players must prove that they have permanent residency outside of Cuba."
Now, personally, I think the whole embargo policy is silly macho posturing from a kid's game long past relevance and only hurts people. Others may argue differently.
But nobody can say with a straight face that Major League Baseball is as interesting as it's ever going to get and doesn't need new talent.
Besides, allowing Cuban athletes to sign with American sports leagues would signal a victory of capitalism over socialism, the very pissing contest we've been having for fifty years. And not just any capitalism, either, but the most flagrantly rapacious kind, that takes taxpayer money for stadiums and shoves it into the pockets of uber-rich playboys and hyper-consolidated media conglomeroids. In your face, Karl Marx.
So I propose we bash the fist serious crack in our Tropical Berlin Wall by allowing our Cuban brothers and sisters to compete head to head against our own best, so that we can all get even better.
I mean, it's not like you can make the sport less interesting.