Peer Bjarkman writes:\u00a0 Despite speculation\u2014and lots of wishful thinking\u2014that Cuban baseball players are about to flood American baseball diamonds, a drought of Cuban players is much likelier.\u00a0 Optimists are now speculating and baseball fans are dreaming about how a promised Cuba-U.S. diplomatic accord might launch a building boom of big league academies on the long-isolated communist island and unleash a steady flow of Cuban talent onto big league rosters. But the realities of pending diplomatic relations may ironically benefit the Cuban baseball establishment far more by actually restricting the Cuban ballplayer pipeline.<\/p>\n
Central to the Cuba question for many Americans has been the potential impact of a proposed d\u00e9tente on \u201cbaseball diplomacy\u201d and on Major League Baseball\u2019s own embargoed business transactions with the single talent-rich corner of the baseball universe to which it has so long been denied access. For decades Cuba has been recognized as a major wellspring of player talent and home to a celebrated domestic league spawning some of the greatest individual players never witnessed in action on big league diamonds. For years top Cuban national teams remained shielded from American view while dominating international tournament play such as Olympic tournaments and the Baseball World Cup. In a decade beginning in 1987, Cuban national teams playing in international competitions recorded a remarkable 156 consecutive victories without a single setback.<\/p>\n
These Cuban juggernaut teams and big-league caliber Cuban players remained far off the radar for North American fans partly due to the vagaries of international politics. But they also remained hidden by the fact that international versions of the sport have very little resonance on a North American scene where generations of fans have learned to think of the national pastime almost exclusively in terms of Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
All that changed over a recent decade and a half that has witnessed a handful of Cuban stars like El Duque Hern\u00e1ndez, half-brother Liv\u00e1n Hern\u00e1ndez, Jos\u00e9 Contreras, and most recently Yasiel Puig and Jos\u00e9 Abreu abandon their homeland to pursue the fame and riches offered by North America\u2019s professional leagues. In the past three seasons alone, no one has had a bigger impact on professional baseball in the U.S. than Cuban players. What began as a slow trickle of Cuban refugee ballplayers in the mid-\u201990s has suddenly exploded into a full-fledged invasion headlined by the sensational debuts of, among others, flame-throwing bullpen ace Aroldis Chapman in Cincinnati, flashy five-tool outfielder Yasiel Puig in Los Angeles, and slugging American League rookie-of-the-year Jos\u00e9 Abreu in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Worsening economic conditions on the Communist island have of late precipitated a heretofore unprecedented flood of Cuban ballplayer \u201cdefections.\u201d As many as 350 former Cuban players\u2014with perhaps two dozen of them possessing genuinely big league credentials\u2014are now expatriates actively seeking lucrative North American professional contracts. In a celebrity-obsessed American sports world where fans and journalists alike are increasingly as impressed by lavish signing bonuses as by ballpark statistics, it has been the top-dollar, bank-busting contracts thrown at some of these previously unknown high-profile Cubans ($42 million spent by the Dodgers on Puig, $30 million handed over to Chapman by Cincinnati, $68 million to Abreu, $72 million for Boston signee Rusney Castillo, and a lavish $80 million recently invested on untested slugger Yasmany Tom\u00e1s by Arizona) that have drawn the bulk of the media headlines.<\/p>\n
![\"Fidel](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Fidel-Castro-at-Bat.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peer Bjarkman writes:\u00a0 Despite speculation\u2014and lots of wishful thinking\u2014that Cuban baseball players are about to flood American baseball diamonds, a drought of Cuban players is much likelier.\u00a0 Optimists are now speculating and baseball fans are dreaming about how a promised … Continue reading