Cuban immigrant barred from tournament after Maccabiah about-face

One week before the Maccabiah, a Cuban immigrant who had trained for more than three months was told he would not be eligible to compete for Israel's junior baseball team because he was a few months too old, though Maccabiah staff had repeatedly assured his team he could play.

The team itself admitted that the player was ineligible according to the letter of the law but said an exception should be made in the spirit of the Games. Maccabiah officials said that those who allowed the player to compete had no authority to do so and that no exception could be made.

Yoandry Gil-Levy, a pitcher who three years ago moved from Havana to Ra'anana, was born in September 1990. According to Maccabiah rules, only players born between 1991 and 1994 are eligible to play in the junior league. There is currently no baseball competition for seniors at the Maccabiah.

"Three months ago, we checked with the Maccabiah and they said that Yoandry is certainly eligible since he'd be 18 years old during the time of the tournament, and that's what counts," said Peter Kurz, the manager of the Israeli baseball team. "Based on that, I told Yoandry that he could play and he worked out very conscientiously with the team for the last three months."

Kurz told Haaretz he got nervous when he saw on the Maccabiah Web site that players born before 1991 would be ineligible. He said that both Avi Rash, the assistant of Maccabiah Sport Director Asaf Stolarz, and Stolarz's secretary Reut Sadia, told the team Gil-Levy could play.

A week before the Games, Kurz received a list of eligible players that did not contain Gil-Levy's name. He wrote a letter to the event's International Sports Committee, or ISC, asking it to reconsider, because being disqualified would be "a major blow" to Gil-Levy.

"As an immigrant, having the word Israel emblazoned across his chest, playing for the Israel National Team and representing the State of Israel, there cannot be a better way to be integrated into Israeli society and become a true Israeli," Kurz wrote.

"The purpose of the Maccabiah is to bring together Jewish youth from all over the world - by declaring an immigrant from Cuba ineligible, you are working against that very mission," he said.

The ISC denied the request, saying that only committee members have the discretion to approve athletes who are too old and that the people who gave the green light were not associated with the body.

"You should have been there when I told Yoandry he wasn't playing," Kurz said. "The kid cried his eyes out. He was really looking forward to playing. In this instance the Maccabiah really blew it. They shouldn't have withdrawn their decision. Rules are rules, but there had to be some kind of different spirit."

Gil-Levy, whose father and sister still live in Cuba, told Haaretz last week that he'll get over his initial disappointment. "I don't feel good about it, but what can you do? I'm okay now with not playing, there's just nothing you can do," he said.