Cuban President Fidel Castro has given the go-ahead for Cuba to play in the World Baseball Classic next year.
The 16-nation World Cup-style baseball event is the first international tournament to include major-league players and will begin on March 3rd in Tokyo and end in San Diego three weeks later.
Cuban involvement had been in doubt for an event that will be played mainly in the United States, Castro's ideological foe and a magnet for the defection of communist Cuba's best players attracted by multimillion-dollar contracts.
Talent scouts and Cuban exile community go-betweens are expected to contact the better prospects on the Cuban team, raising the risk of new defections.
"We can do it better and take on the major leagues. . . . For each player that leaves, 10 better ones arise," Castro said on Wednesday night about the drain of Cuban talent
The list of defectors includes such big-league stars as pitchers Jose Contreras and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the World Series champion Chicago White Sox and Hernandez's brother, Livan Hernandez, who pitches for the Washington Nationals.
Olympic champion Cuba has dominated international baseball because the best American professional players seldom go to bat for their country, so the unprecedented tournament in March could decide which country is king of the sport.
A Cuban team last played in the United States in 1999 in an exhibition game in Baltimore against the major-league Orioles. None of the Cuban players defected.
Besides the United States and Cuba, the other countries playing in March are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Canada, South Africa, Australia, The Netherlands, Italy, Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.