Castro talks a little (Olympic) baseball

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Cuba’s Fidel Castro is angry that next month’s Beijing Games will be the last Olympics for baseball.

An avid fan of the game, the ailing former president today blasted the ‘rich and powerful masters’ of the Olympics for dropping baseball beginning in 2012, and said two recent defeats at the hands of the U.S. team doesn’t mean Cuba can’t still win gold in Beijing.

The Associated Press said that Castro, in a brief but confusing essay, noted the ‘thundering indignation of the fans because of Saturday’s hard defeat,’ apparently referring to Cuba’s 4-1 loss to the U.S. during Sunday’s title game at the 24th Haarlem Baseball Week in the Netherlands.

Cuba has nevertheless won three of the four Olympic gold medals since baseball became a medal sport in 1992 — settling for silver in 2000, when it was upset by the U.S.

Castro, 81, wrote that the latest incarnation of the national team has ‘not been defeated.’

‘We haven’t given up on them,’ he wrote. ‘We send them a message to raise their spirits.’

The AP said he went on to suggest that jet lag could hurt Cuba’s chances during the Beijing Games, stating that members of the national team ‘do not deserve major criticisms if something does not go right.’

‘They are going to the Olympic Games, which will be played on the other side of the world, where sleeping patterns and the rhythm of life changes,’ he wrote.

-- Debbie Goffa