Cuban players richly deserve a WBC victory

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in Monday's Sports section erroneously said that no Cuban national team baseball player had defected since Jose Contreras in 2002. While Cuban baseball players have defected since 2002, Contreras was the last one to do so during an international tournament.)

SAN DIEGO -- You can have the rest of the world. I'm going with the communists.

I'm rooting for the guys who put team above self. I'm rooting for the guys who make $20 a month to play baseball and cling to a free sweat suit like it's gold, guys who play the game the way it's supposed to be played.

I'm rooting for Fidel Castro's team tonight in the World Baseball Classic championship game featuring Cuba vs. Japan.

Except for Ichiro Suzuki of Japan, all of the major league millionaires have gone back to their teams in Florida and Arizona. Mexico beat the US, which sent Alex Rodriguez and his quarter-billion-dollar contract back to Tampa where George Steinbrenner waited impatiently. The 11 big league All-Stars who play for Venezuela also failed to qualify for the Final Four at Petco Park. The Dominican Baseball Factory featuring David Ortiz, Miguel Tejada, Albert Pujols, Alfonso Soriano, Adrián Beltré, Moisés Alou, and Bartolo Colón was spanked and sent home by Cuba in the semifinals Saturday.

So now the Cubans need only one more win to bring glory to their homeland. Maybe the dictator will reward them with cans of paint.

I mention paint only because I remember the Cuban Olympians in Barcelona in 1992, crushing all opposition en route to a gold medal. During their international tour, at least one player picked up gallons of paint to bring home. He needed to paint his house and there was none to be had in Cuba.

Baseball truly is a religion in Cuba. Students who studied in America brought the game to the island in the 1800s and today it is the national sport in the country of 11 1/2 million people. Players pledge allegiance to Fidel and none has defected since José Contreras went AWOL in 2002.

There was considerable debate as to whether the Cubans would be included in the first World Baseball Classic (it's a violation of US law for tourney profits to go to the Cuban government, so an agreement was reached to have proceeds go to charity), but now that the embarrassed Americans have gone home, the Cuban team has emerged as the story line of the tournament. We don't know much about any of the players, but we admire the way they play the game.

''It's a different dedication," Hall of Famer Dave Winfield noted after watching Cuba's 3-1 victory over the Dominican Republic Saturday. ''You can see what it means to them. They had 12 hits against the Dominicans, all singles. They run and take the extra base and put pressure on the defense."

Including Olympics, World Cups, Intercontinental Cups, and this tourney, the Cubans have made it to the championship game of an international tournament 37 straight times. The last time Cuba finished lower than second in international competition was in 1951. It wasn't supposed to happen this time because the big leaguers were here, but that hasn't kept Cuba from taking its traditional place in the championship final.

''In Cuba, we have a large number of players," manager Higinio Velez said Saturday. ''It is a national sport. If we go back in history, before the revolution, we had a large number of players playing in the major leagues."

Indeed. Old-time American fans remember Camilo Pascual, Minnie Minoso, Willy Miranda, and other Cubans who dotted big league rosters before Castro took over. More recently, we've seen the contributions of defectors Contreras and the Hernández brothers (Livan and El Duque).

The Cubans are in the middle of their season, which helps, but several star players were left home because they were considered risks to defect. Players have security guards near their rooms in the team hotel and representatives from the Department of Homeland Security stand guard at their games. Antonio Castro, the 37-year-old son of Fidel, is the team doctor and often can be seen standing next to Velez during games.

Saturday's win represented Cuba's first appearance on US soil since an exhibition against the Orioles at Camden Yards in 1999. Before that, it was Atlanta and Olympic gold in 1996. Spanish-speaking reporters at the WBC have caught some discrepancies in transcripts of conversations featuring the Cuban players and coach. The interpreter assigned to Cuba was told by Major League Baseball not to take on any political questions.

Velez this week was asked about worries of defection and answered (we think), ''If someone says that we have them under control because they might want to leave, they might want to run away, it's not true. You know very well that if you want to run away, if you want to go to another place, you can do that whenever you want. You can just leave the stadium, grab a cab, leave the hotel, and that's it. They don't want to do that. They want to play. Don't you think that they want to go back to Cuba and feel the way they are going to feel when they go back home after what they've done here?"

It's obvious the players are having fun. They travel, eat, practice, and play as a unit. They appreciate getting to play on well-manicured fields with new equipment. They never toss a stray ball into the stands.

Yoandy Garlobo, who had three hits against the Dominican Republic, said (we think), ''Baseball is baseball anywhere in the world, be it major leagues or not. But we see baseball as such not because of the price of athletes, but because of the heart with which they play."

Veteran Pedro Lazo warmed up wearing his jacket Saturday, then pitched 4 2/3 innings of scoreless relief in the win against the Dominican. He's won two gold medals for his homeland and said, ''For all of us, it has been a point of great pride to play against teams like this. We are very proud with ourselves, very proud of our performance. All we need is to win this tournament. We are really close and we hope to win it."

I hope they do, too.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.