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Guantanamo Detainees to Play American Baseball
Wednesday, March 29^th, 2007

President Bush Believes Baseball Brings People Together and Helps Explain Western Values

El Dorado Hills, CA - A source inside the Pentagon confirmed today that some of the prisoners held at Guantanamo will be offered the opportunity to participate in America's favorite past time: baseball. Their opponents will be American servicemen. The decision is part of an extensive new outreach effort to create better relations between the United States and the Muslim extremists.

According to independent publishing house Savas Beatie, LLC, the idea originated with Pete Merrick, a guard at Guantanamo and former high school baseball standout. Merrick got the idea from Gary W. Moore's recently released book Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams (2006). "If the Americans can teach the Nazis to play baseball and break through the ice, then why can't we teach some of these detainees the same thing?"

Merrick raised the sensitive issue with his superior, "who was initially very cool to the idea," explained the former California shortstop. "But he eventually came around and kicked the suggestion upstairs."

According to the Pentagon source, the journey "upstairs" made it all the way to President Bush's desk. The President quickly warmed to the prospects of improving relations (and the world's view of Guantanamo) through baseball. The former owner of the Texas Rangers and Commander-in-Chief is an avid baseball fan and sometimes referred to in the White House as "the nation's First Baseball Fan."

President Bush often does things to honor his father, President George H. W. Bush, a former Navy pilot who played first base for the Yale Baseball Team. In an ironic twist, author Gary Moore's father Gene was a baseball-playing sailor with major league aspirations. Playing with the Enemy explains how Gene, who was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers at the age of 15, overcame the stiff opposition of his superiors to teach the game of baseball to captured Nazis he and his teammates were guarding in Louisiana. The Germans fell into American hands when their submarine U-505 (currently on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry) was captured in 1944. Moore's saga was sold to an academy award-winning Hollywood producer. The movie is scheduled to shoot this summer.

According to the Pentagon source, who spoke off the record, officials in both the White House and inside the Pentagon "vigorously protested" the President's decision, but have since thawed to the idea, especially since some of the detainees themselves have expressed interest in the idea. "The President feels strongly about both the game and the prospects for improving relations. How better to do that than with a game of baseball?"

Author Gary Moore was dumbfounded when he "got the call." As Moore told a local reporter, he was "honored the President is following in my father's footsteps and using the greatest game ever invented to craft a public relations solution to Guantanamo. I wish the President luck in this endeavor, and would love to throw out the first pitch in the first game ever played between American Naval ballplayers and Islamic extremists."

Training is set to coincide with the April 1 opening of the 2007 Major League Baseball season.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

Tell the White House and Congress what you think about President Bush's decision.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ (for the White House)

http://www.house.gov/writerep/ (for Congress)

Southwest Airlines is the Proud Sponsor of the Playing with the Enemy Hardcover Book Tour!