By MARY SANCHEZ

. . . as American as baseball and apple pie.

Or is that beisbol and a guava-filled tart?

Baseball has long been an American pastime, but anyone watching lineups knows the game is a world matter now.

And the best team in the world is?

Thanks to Uncle Sam, we may never know.

U.S. foreign policy has reared its illogical head, threatening to ruin the World Baseball Classic. The inaugural Classic was envisioned by Major League Baseball and its union. The games are to be played in March in Puerto Rico, Japan and the United States. Sixteen of the best teams in the world were lined up — including the reigning Olympic gold medal team from Cuba.

Then Uncle Sam crashed the field. “No,” if Cuba is playing on U.S. soil, was the reply of the U.S. Treasury Department. That would be in violation of the more than 40-year-old economic sanctions the United States has imposed against Cuba.

The rationale given Major League Baseball was based on the idea that Cuba might benefit economically from the tournament. Never mind that Cuba’s baseball federation countered by offering to donate any proceeds its players might make to Hurricane

Katrina victims.

Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, is part of the Treasury’s problem with the Classic. One group of teams — Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands and Panama — were to play there in a preliminary round. The finals are slotted for San Diego.

Venezuela is offering to host the Puerto Rican part of the tournament and have Canada host the finals. That way, a Cuban team could play without stepping into the muck of U.S. policy.

Unfortunately, that move would give Venezuela’s boastful leader Hugo Chavez yet another verbal rant to take up against the United States. And he’d be right this time in accusing the United States of double standards, adhering to outdated foreign policy.

A group of Cuban-born baseball players and Cuban-American players have proposed organizing to represent Cuba. But this likely will not be allowed, as the plan violates other rules of international play.

And Major League Baseball is appealing the Treasury decision.

Good luck. A successful appeal would hinge on someone in the Treasury Department making a logical decision on the Baseball Classic. Unfortunately, U.S. policy toward Cuba is going the opposite direction; ever more illogical.

Consider this: The Treasury Department fears Cuba making a profit from the games. But the U.S. sells several hundred million dollars worth of goods to Cuba every year. And a Cuban soccer team was allowed to travel in the United States last year, playing tournaments in several U.S. cities.

The decision stifling play for the World Baseball Classic is only the most recent of the Bush administration’s ever-more-stringent rules regarding Cuba. This might be understandable if the Bush policy shifts were having a positive effect on U.S./Cuban relations. They are not. Fidel Castro is catching only glancing blows. The Cuban people — both on the island and Cuban-Americans — are bearing the brunt.

Cuban-Americans can now visit relatives only once every three years, not the once a year they were allowed. And, their right to send money to relatives in Cuba also has been drastically curtailed.

Universities and other researchers have also lost their licenses to travel to Cuba; their trips offered some of the best examples of spreading democratic ideals to Cuba.

Sad truths exist for ill-configured policy. One poor decision often snowballs into a series of bad outcomes. This is true whether the stand is invoked by the manager of a sports team, or leaders of a government.

If Cuba could play and donate its proceeds to Katrina survivors, goodwill might have been extended between the two countries. Maybe even a few of the Cuban players would have defected to the United States, as so many have already done. Defections, after all, make solid statements about which country people prefer.

But Uncle Sam is acting like a low-self-esteem bully on the playground. He wants to play only by his rules, and those rules are stacked against fair play.

Mary Sanchez is an opinion page columnist for the Kansas City Star.