I can feel it in the air. The temperature is changing and my collection of New York Yankees apparel is beginning to feel a little neglected in the closet.

Baseball season begins tomorrow — maybe not officially but in the hearts and minds of all of us a little Olympic’ed out.

While spring training is under way across the southern half of the country, many of the perennial all-stars we look for are playing a different ballgame around the world.

The World Baseball Classic starts tomorrow in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Phoenix and Orlando. While the immediate reaction for baseball fans is, “Hell yeah, more baseball!” and for others, “Aw man, more baseball,” the World Baseball Classic presents larger social issues associated with the world today — namely the hostilities among certain countries and their seeding in the tournament.

The most obvious tension amongst countries, at least from our American vantage point, is the chance the Cuban baseball team may have to play the United States on American soil.

Since the U.S. embargo on Cuba in 1962, Cubans and Americans have been unable to visit each other’s countries (with few exceptions), and a healthy trade relationship prior to Fidel Castro’s seize of power from Fulgencio Baptista in 1959 has become stagnant as U.S. president after U.S. president has refused to deal with the communist leader.

The political and economic strife present between the U.S. and Cuba can be seen on the baseball diamond.

Baseball players are not unlike the defectors risking their lives on cardboard boats to leave Cuba for a better life in the U.S. Unlike these refugees on flimsy rafts, baseball players like Jose Contreras and Orlando Hernandez — members of the World Champion Chicago White Sox — signed multi-million dollar contracts after big league talent agents saw them as some of the best players Cuba had to offer.

If the Cuban team does make it past the seemingly unstoppable Puerto Rican team, which is a definite possibility because of the quality of Cuban baseball players, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to take a small plane here and squish in as many people as they can — there will be plenty of seats on the way home.

All that is if the Cuban team even makes it past the first round. The Puerto Rican team it faces is stacked with players like Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, Ivan Rodriguez and Fernando Cabrera.

If it comes down to a game between the U.S. and Cuba, things could get interesting as both teams play for not only advancement in the tournament, but also national pride. Cuba prides itself on having one of the best, underrated baseball leagues in the world, while the U.S., who claims the game as its national pastime, has the most successful and skilled league in the world. Add that to the fact both countries do not admit any fault to that little altercation called the Cuban missile crisis. A meeting between the two teams could prove to be a striking blow to post-Cold War tension between the two countries.

On the other side of the world, a more serious confrontation between China and Japan could lead to tensions between Japan, a globally admired baseball country, and China, a blossoming name in the sport. They play each other in the first round of the tournament.

Any other rivalry between countries is purely a slap fight compared to the repercussions due to the jingoist national pride each country feels in relation to the other.

The tension between China and Japan has been in the news recently because of Japan’s refusal to teach students the atrocities its country committed against the Chinese in a period of sweeping East Asian occupancy in the 1930s and 1940s. The Chinese have taken to the streets in their major cities to protest what they feel is a glossed over account of the brutal murder of between 250,000 and 300,000 Chinese.

Not to sound like a cliché sports commentator, but when these two teams meet at 4:30 a.m. our time on Friday, there will be no love lost. Tensions could in fact grow if national pride hijacks the spirit of the game and the competition.

The World Baseball Classic has a potential future to show the U.S. is not the only country producing quality players; in fact, U.S. national pride could be hurt in the finals after the U.S. easily beats the North American and Asian teams, but has to play the exceptional Caribbean teams with players that dominate Major League Baseball.