Cuba plans to play in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and, no surprise, considers itself a favorite to win the tournament. "We have said we are going to participate," Jose Ramon Fernandez, the island's top sports' official, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "It's been authorized." In 2006, Cuba reached the championship game of the initial WBC, losing to Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ichiro Suzuki and Japan 10-6 in San Diego. "With the same players and other better ones than those who were there, are we in crisis? Please," Fernandez scoffed. "Today we don't just have one team for the Classic; we have more than that." Fernandez, a Cuban vice president and head of the Olympic Committee, praised Major League Baseball for engaging in "a respectful and proper dialogue and looking for solutions for both sides" when it looked as if an embargo might keep the country out of last year's tournament.