"I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing."--Sargeant Schultz, Hogan's Heroes (RIP)

You remember, of course, Venezuela--they said they're stopping the flow of baseball players, and you did nothing about it. Now, they're doing it, and you still do nothing. From a 12/15/06 salon.com blog on Venezuelan matters:

Government to regulate baseball signings of Venezuelans I am not sure what to think about this, part of it sounds reasonable, but another seems fishy: "The National Institute for Sports released a project that will regulate the issuing and registering of professional sports licenses in baseball, where children and adolescents that practice that sport will require express authorization from their parents to obtain the legal requirements to compete at that level." "The primary objective is to prevent the indiscriminate signing of Venezuelan youth and protect them in the face of any foreign country that wants to have them in their roster. We will seek to validate the principles of efficacy, objectivity, impartiality, honesty, among others, where the priority will be the integral development of the athlete" The first paragraph sounds eminently reasonable, to insure the parents of local baseball players who are underage approve the signing and the terms of the signing, but the part about protecting the youth against foreign countries, given that only US teams come to Venezuela to sign baseball players, sounds like the Government will create obstacles for the development (and enrichment!) of our good players. Moreover, nly baseball is mentioned. The Venezuelan Government already tried to create a parallel baseball league to undermine the local professional baseball league a couple of years ago. After a bombastic opening game, with Chavez in attendance, only one other game was played. A lot of money was wasted on that project.

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