Cuban Ballplayers Defect

Sin Duda

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Per the Associated Press, the Red Sox brass may have some additional free agents to consider this winter.

HAVANA -- Nine of the 24 players on Cuba's national team at baseball's U-23 World Cup defected during the tournament in Mexico, the Cuban government confirmed Sunday. Cuban officials called the players' actions “vile abandonments” in a note published by the web portal JIT, which is the official organ of the island's National Sports Institute. The institute did not identify the players who stayed in Mexico.
 

mauidano

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I am always a bit surprised that Cuba travels to these types of events and allow these kids in situations where they can defect. The lure of freedom and unimaginable wealth for any young Cuban athlete makes you wonder why they all don't make a break for it. It's got to be a gut wrenching decision to leave family and friends behind. Countless stories of the pain and heartbreak are well documented.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I am always a bit surprised that Cuba travels to these types of events and allow these kids in situations where they can defect. The lure of freedom and unimaginable wealth for any young Cuban athlete makes you wonder why they all don't make a break for it. It's got to be a gut wrenching decision to leave family and friends behind. Countless stories of the pain and heartbreak are well documented.
I've always suspected that someone in the Cuban baseball operations wants these players to defect even if they can never admit it. The best they can do is keep setting up these trips and hoping players can get away clean. Plausible deniability from a job security standpoint but a clean conscience when they lose a player or two (or nine).
 

cannonball 1729

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I've always suspected that someone in the Cuban baseball operations wants these players to defect even if they can never admit it. The best they can do is keep setting up these trips and hoping players can get away clean. Plausible deniability from a job security standpoint but a clean conscience when they lose a player or two (or nine).
I'd bet this is accurate. Remittances are a $2 billion industry for Cuba. "Losing" a player who can send a million dollars back to the homeland every year is very beneficial to Cuba, even if they don't want to admit it.
 

Sin Duda

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Here is a nice rundown of Cubans in the MLB as of April 2021: 17 Cubans in MLB. Per the article, their numbers are down from a high of ~30 in 2019/20. Trump cancelled the more open US relations with Cuban baseball; maybe that will return with the current administration.
 

RSN Diaspora

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I'd bet this is accurate. Remittances are a $2 billion industry for Cuba. "Losing" a player who can send a million dollars back to the homeland every year is very beneficial to Cuba, even if they don't want to admit it.
100%--only the service and tourism industries bring in more US dollars to Cuba, and it's the dollar to which the Cuban Convertible Peso is pegged. The wife and I toured Havana in early 2017 right before the Trump Administration reversed a lot of travel restriction-easing Obama put in place--from before it opened until it closed, the line outside Western Union was always wrapped around the corner. Add in that roughly half of those remittances come through sanctioned means like wire transfers and the other half come through hand delivery, it's probably commonplace for Cubans who make it to the majors to come home in the offseason with a decent amount to spread around.

What's more curious to me is that given that baseball is like religion in Cuba, why we don't see more Cuban stars who do defect--I believe Tony Perez is the only Cuban-born Major Leaguer in the Hall of Fame. Equally curious is why the Marlins don't draw dick, even in the rare years that they're good, given how large the Cuban-American population is in Miami.
 

OCST

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I think the biggest benefit for the regime is that it gives the kids something to dream about, the people generally something to be proud of, etc.

But I mostly popped in here yo say that the thread title made it seem as if it was about some intrinsic biological flaw that had been identified in these men.