LASORDA PITCHES IN WITH POLITICS
With the United States set to face Cuba in the baseball tournament next week, American coach Tom Lasorda decided to bring the first parcel of politics to the party. Expect plenty more to follow before the round robin game takes place next Saturday.
Lasorda, talking before America's opening game against Japan, said: 'I’m very familiar with the whole scene in Cuba. I was there during the revolution. I saw the government change hands twice in Cuba. I was playing there in ’52 and in ’59 when Castro came in. And I’m saying this with my whole heart: We want to beat those guys to show all those Cubans that live in Miami and in the United States. We want to beat them for them.'
The US-Cuba baseball games have had political overtones in the last two Olympics, in part because so many Cuban players have defected to the United States to play in the major leagues. Defections and blockades, though, has not stopped Cuba taking golds in the last two tournaments and this is what really rankles with Lasorda and his compatriots.
'They’re not going to intimidate us to any degree,' he went on. 'We don’t care what they have on the front of their shirts. We know one thing, they’re going to be a team that we’re going to want to beat.'
PETER WATTS
Sunday Times
