WASHINGTON — If a major-league baseball team plays a spring training game in Cuba next year, it will be the Tampa Bay Rays.
Commissioner Rob Manfred chose the Rays by picking a ball out of a bin at baseball’s offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan on Friday afternoon.
So many teams, including the Mets, the Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, had wanted to play in Cuba that Manfred decided to hold a lottery.
It is not a forgone conclusion that there will be a game. Major League Baseball still needs to negotiate the terms of the game with the Cuban government.