Say Anything Blog

The Rutland Herald has it:

Vermont’s senior U.S. senator has some blunt advice for a South Florida congressman: “He should pick on someone his own size.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., leveled his criticism Wednesday at Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who has expressed serious reservations about a combined Vermont/New Hampshire youth baseball trip to Cuba next week.

Leahy said in a statement that Diaz-Balart should leave the kids alone.

“I don’t like the idea of the government telling ordinary Americans, let alone Little Leaguers, where and when they can travel,” Leahy said. “If the president can go to China at taxpayers’ expense, these kids ought to be able to go on a privately paid trip to Cuba to play some baseball.”

Diaz-Balart, a staunch anti-Castro Cuban-American, convened a meeting of the Cuba Democracy Caucus on July 10 to discuss the trip, according to a column in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

The all-star team of 11- and 12-year-olds from the Connecticut Valley South Little League is scheduled to travel to Cuba for 10 days starting Aug. 8 for a series of games with their Cuban counterparts.

Travel to Cuba by Americans without the express permission of the U.S. government is forbidden — a travel and trade embargo that’s been in effect for nearly 50 years since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 and installed a communist regime.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a travel license for the 14 players and their coaches in late March. The license allows the team to spend U.S. dollars in Cuba.

In his invitation to the Cuba Democracy Caucus, Diaz-Balart said the meeting would be attended by officials from the Treasury and State departments. The subject of the meeting was “… the very troubling granting of a Treasury/OFAC license to a Little League team to travel to Cuba in August,” reported Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, quoting the e-mail.

Diaz-Balart and other supporters of the travel ban argue that it denies hard currency to a repressive regime.

Treasury Department spokesman Andrew DeSouza on Wednesday would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the travel license, saying licenses are protected by the Trade Secrets Act.

Because the trip is not sanctioned by Little League International in Williamsport, Pa., the team is playing in Cuba as the Twin State Peregrines.

Leahy went on to say that there are far more important issues facing the country than taking issue with a group of youngsters playing baseball in Cuba. He also pointed out that the Bush Treasury Department didn’t think there was a problem.

“The fact that the Bush Administration, which tries to make travel to Cuba nearly impossible, decided it had no basis to deny the team’s request shows how far off-base these critics are,” Leahy said.

Dubie, a Republican who has gone on two trade missions to Cuba as lieutenant governor, supports the trip as a way to foster goodwill between the countries.

“I believe it will lead to a better and more secure world and I believe it’s through grass-roots connections of people-to-people and baseball teams playing one another that we expand our understanding and that’s consistent with the objectives of our initial trips to Cuba,” Dubie said in a June interview.

Messages left Wednesday for Diaz-Balart were not returned.

Preventing Little Leaguers from playing baseball in Cuba? Does that warrant all this political posturing? I think its a waste of time and its pathetic. Clearly these kids have gone through the proper channels and will be representing our country well in Cuba. Hopefully they can kick butt in Cuba, have a good time, and bring home a trophy!

EDIT: Sports Illustrated covered it here.

It's a trip few youth teams have taken since the U.S. trade embargo began in 1961. "There's this mysteriousness because [Cuba is] Communist," says Ted Levin, a Peregrines coach. "Yet we have baseball in common. I think our kids can connect with their kids, regardless of what our governments are thinking."

"I've always wanted to play people in a different country," says second baseman Andrew Cawley, 12, of East Corinth, Vt. "I just know they love baseball there."