One of the first posts on this blog was about the rumors of a Baseball World Cup that was being planned for March 2005. Now, that story has collided with another story I've been following here -- the ongoing efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency to get all Olympic sports onboard with their testing guidelines. Baseball, internationally, has signed on with WADA. But the Major Leagues have their own drug testing policies, which don't sync with WADA's.
Which leads to this: A possible Baseball World Cup could be scuttled if Major League Baseball won't do more stringent drug testing. Specifically, Cuba will not participate in such a tournament without IBAF, the international baseball federation, sanction. Japan has also indicated that it would prefer the tournament to take place under the IBAF, and not MLB.
Of course, MLB could just run a tournament on their own, without teams from Japan or Cuba, but that would be a damn shame. It would also be a shame not to have a Baseball World Cup at all, since such an event would be a huge boost for the game internationally, not to mention a ton of fun to watch.
Given the player's union's stance on drug testing (they don't want it), this could be a hell of a fight.