12/17/14, "
Once again, Cuba, with its history of the sport, beckons to baseball," NY Times, Michael S. Schmidt
"
At a dinner in one of Fidel Castro’s palaces in 1999, Castro and
several of Major League Baseball’s senior executives discussed one of
the few bonds between Cuba and the United States: baseball.
The
executives, including baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig, were there for
an exhibition game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national
team,
as part of an effort by President Bill Clinton to thaw relations.
As the dinner stretched into the early hours of the morning, Castro
regaled Selig with tales from the history of Cuban baseball and
fantasized about what would happen if the United States and Cuba ever
normalized ties.
Castro told one of the executives, Sandy Alderson, who
had overseen preparations for the trip, that he was open to the idea of
major league teams having academies in Cuba similar to the ones in the
Dominican Republic, where teenage players honed their skills in the
hopes of making it to the majors. Fifteen years after that
dinner, the vision of an active relationship between Cuba and Major
League Baseball became a little more real
Wednesday after President
Barack Obama’s announcement that he planned to restore full diplomatic
relations with the island nation.
In one of Obama’s most
significant foreign policy initiatives,
he said he would open an embassy
in Havana for the first time in more than a half century and said the
United States would ease restrictions on travel and banking.
When
Castro took power in 1959, Cuba’s pool of talented baseball players -
one of the largest outside the United States - became off-limits to
major league teams, except for the stream of players who defected. The
19 Cuban-born players who were major leaguers in all or part of the 2014
season - like Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig - made up the
highest number since 1967, when there were 30. But scouts and general
managers have said it would be far higher if teams could send
representatives to Cuba and sign players, and then develop them.
Significant foreign policy announcements from Washington do not usually
prompt the baseball commissioner’s office or the players union to
respond.
But after Obama addressed the nation Wednesday, both released
terse statements saying they were monitoring the situation.
Baseball officials, team executives, scouts, agents and fans began to
speculate about how soon major league teams might be able to sign
players in Cuba. Some even wondered whether Major League Baseball might
be tempted to relocate a team like the Tampa Bay Rays, which has a
feeble fan base, to Havana, where it would most likely be a sensation.
Others questioned how rich the Cuban talent pool really was.
At
one point Wednesday, Major League Baseball became so concerned about the
reaction to Obama’s announcement that it sent a directive to its 30
teams pointing out that it remained illegal to scout players in Cuba or
to sign them, because the U.S. embargo of the island remained in effect.
Obama cannot lift the embargo on his own, and a Congress that will be
fully controlled by Republicans starting in January is unlikely to go
along with the idea, at least any time soon.
Some baseball
officials thought that the changes in travel restrictions that would now
take effect could at least ease the chaotic process that started in the
1990s, when the island’s top players would escape, often in boats in
the middle of the night, defect to the United States and sign as free
agents with major league teams.
With 11 million people, Cuba
would not just be a talent source for Major League Baseball if a working
relationship was established; it would also be an ideal market.
Baseball has expanded its efforts in the past decade in Asia and
Australia as it seeks new revenue, and Cuba would be a welcome addition
to the list.
As recently as 2007, Major League Baseball was
quietly putting together plans for what to do if the United States
changed its relationship with Cuba. Baseball officials, working with
academics and business executives and with players born in Cuba, were
determining how they could take advantage of the island’s interest in
the game and its talent pool if the opportunity arose.
Still,
while the best Cuban players are among the most talented in the world,
it is not completely clear how well-developed Cuban youth leagues are
and what shape the island’s fields and equipment are in.
U.S.
scouts have had a chance to watch Cuban players in recent years at the
World Baseball Classic, in which teams from around the world square off
in a March tournament. And, of course, they have watched
defectors like
Puig, Yoenis Cespedes, Jose Abreu and Aroldis Chapman succeed on the
major league level - and sign increasingly lucrative contracts.
Peter C. Bjarkman, a Cuban baseball historian, noted that the Cuban
government had recently adopted a policy that allowed players to join
teams in Mexico and Japan. But major league clubs in the United States
are a different matter.
“The Cubans want their players to now
have more experience and to play professionally overseas and earn some
money,” Bjarkman said.
“But there is a condition: They want those
players to play in the Cuban league in the winter. Otherwise they will
be throwing up their hands.”
Major league teams, however, would
probably not agree to allow Cuban players to spend entire winters
playing baseball back home, reasoning that the injury risk would be too
great.
“This is an issue that’s going to be debated in Cuba now,”
Bjarkman said. “They want to utilize baseball resources to bring more
money into the country, but they don’t want to sell their league to
North America.”
Cubans have played in the majors as far back as
the early 1900s. The Brooklyn Dodgers occasionally had spring training
on the island in the 1930 and 1940s, and there was minor league
baseball, too.
From 1954 to 1960, the Havana Sugar Kings, a farm team of
the Cincinnati Reds, played in the Class AAA International League.
Roberto González Echevarría, a professor of literature at Yale and the
author of “The Pride of Havana: a History of Cuban Baseball,” noted the
Cuban government had often disparaged Major League Baseball, although
that could become a thing of the past.
Still, he emphasized that
one of Cuba’s biggest fears was a basic one - that if Major League
Baseball was allowed into the island, with all its resources, it would
eventually take over the sport, as it essentially did in the Dominican
Republic.
“How that can be controlled if Cuba becomes freer is very difficult to say,” he said." via Free Rep.
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Comment: The fact that Congress "
will be fully controlled by Republicans starting in January" is by no means bad news for any Obama agenda item. The only Republicans that matter are those in "leadership" and those individuals are simpatico with Democrats. In particular they're eager to help out Mr. Obama any way they can because he helped them beat the Tea Party. The NY Times is aware of all this but does its part to keep the good guy-bad guy narrative going as do the players in the Beltway.
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