I am curious about the reasoning behind this selection... if it ever gets revealed, which it won't.
Apparently this was a pirate broadcast, without any input or awareness on the part of MLB; the call was made solely by the Cuban government/broadcaster. Not having any Cuban players on either team, that could go either way - you'd think they would highlight a native, but can equally understand why they wouldn't and so glorify a defector.
So fine, teams with no Cuban players on them... Easy enough. But of •all• the cities to pick from, DC? The seat of the government you hate and despise? I'd say fine once more with the intent of making said hated enemy city look bad and to let viewers root against them by picking a laugher where our asses were handed to us. But no, instead it was a game we won, a great game where we were at our best, and against our key rival to boot.
As I said, I loved reading about this - but in retrospect, definitely seems like a very illogical and baffling selection when you consider who the selectors were. And yeah, I'm analyzing it way too much, but this is the first game in a half a century broadcast to a historically baseball crazy populous by a government we're suppsedly at odds with. Not a big deal to us, but it had to be to Cubans.
Baseball: Bringing the world together. Less spying, more pirating telecasts to our enemies. Come on, you know I'm just waiting for Pyongyang to announce their picking up MASN Nat's games. Kimmy Junior's gotta be a huge Harper fan.
