Columnist Dean Juipe: How about San Juan and Havana?

Dean Juipe

Friday, Oct. 18, 2002 | 10:05 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

There is a sense, if not a reality, that in the old days Major League Baseball teams existed, in part, to bond the big cities in a still-developing America.

Perhaps that's an overly philanthropic view, but it's a slant worth considering in light of the amended reality: owners buy teams strictly to make money.

But not all 30 big league teams make money, which results in situations where some owners perennially look for greener pastures while others are threatened with an MLB-imposed extinction. Remember, it was precisely a year ago that baseball commissioner Bud Selig introduced the word "contraction" into the sports lexicon with his proposal to do away with the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins.

The Expos, regrettably, remain solvent only by the good graces of baseball's 29 other owners and by a labor agreement with the players' association.

The Twins seem to have rebounded and made this year's playoffs.

Nonetheless, regardless of where the Expos eventually land -- and Washington D.C. or Northern Virginia is apt to get the franchise within a couple of years -- MLB still has a pair of Florida teams that are doing poorly. The Marlins and the Devil Rays are both underappreciated and could be moved or eliminated with barely a whimper of protest.

Which gives me an idea, one that would require a few strings to be pulled but one that would enrich the sport in both a fiscal and abstract sense. I'd move one of the Florida teams to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the other to Havana, Cuba.

Finding a suitor in San Juan should be easy enough; if nothing else, recently retired boxer Felix Trinidad has the cash and connections to pull it off. The team would be immediately profitable and enthusiastically supported.

But I'm especially intrigued with Havana and wish, as I have since the Baltimore Orioles played a televised exhibition game there two years ago, that baseball would take the lead in mending America's division with its island neighbor.

There is no longer any reason for the U.S. to treat Cuba as it does, and with President Bush having Iraq in his sights we could use the goodwill of a significant humanitarian gesture. And MLB stepping forward to put a team in Havana would not only qualify on that count but would give the sport yet another rabidly supported franchise.

Money, of course, is an issue with Cuba and in finding an owner and, eventually, in building a modern stadium, but let's assume those are achievable goals. Placing a team in Havana would help unleash the tremendous potential that exists in that impoverished and neglected land even today.

The Caribbean is a natural, if untapped, resource for MLB. Yes, it already enriches the sport with its athletes but it has yet to be rewarded with a team or two of its own.

An ancillary issue, the expense of travel in that region, would be offset by the health and vibrancy not only of the teams that would play there but in the broadening of baseball's appeal. Every team would realize a financial boost.

The worst thing baseball can do is continue operating where it's not wanted. Florida has had its chance.

It's time to move on. It's time to stretch the frontier.