Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 12 Article 17 Issue 1 Fall Baseball Diplomacy Andrea Kupfer Schneider Marquette University Law School Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Baseball Diplomacy, 12 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 473 (2001) Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol12/iss1/17 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. BASEBALL DIPLOMACY ANDREA KUPFER SCHNEIDER* Cuba is perhaps the country with which the United States has had the longest lasting troubled relationship. Dating back to the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the public's response to Cuba is often visceral and negative. Our response to baseball is similarly visceral and positive.' Baseball has inspired songs,2 jingles,3 poetry,4 and some of our most be- loved movies.5 When the relationship with Cuba collides with the sport that is perhaps our nation's most cherished, the result is bound to be explosive. Consider this: our relationship with Cuba in the last decade has in- cluded the shooting down of civilian aircraft by the Cuban Air Force, the Helms-Burton Act which tried to expand the Cuban embargo, and the Elian Gonzales saga. Yet, at the same time, numerous Cuban baseball players have made their way to the United States and to Major League Baseball (MLB). This article will examine several issues at the intersection of Cuba, the United States, and baseball.