Thawing of Cuban-US relations will put focus on future of island’s baseball players

One of the many myths floating around about Fidel Castro during the most severe years of Cuban-US estrangement is that he almost became a New York Yankees baseball player. The story was that Castro had try-outs in 1951, almost a full decade before he transformed his country into the exotic, socialist enclave it became. The tale was pure hokum but reflected the omnipotent image cultivated by the Cuban leader and the general notion that the island is simply teeming with baseball players who are naturals at America's pastime.

What made Thursday's declaration by Barack Obama of a resumption of 'normalised' relations with Cuba so stunning was that it seemed to happen so casually and easily: a half-century of isolation changed by the stroke of a pen. The negotiations may have been slow-burning and intense behind the scenes but when the world turned its lights out on Tuesday night, it was still as 1959 in Havana. By Wednesday evening, the city was alive to new possibilities and movement between it and its gigantic neighbour, even as America's most prominent Cuban-American politician, Florida's Republican senator Marco Rubio, castigated Obama's decision to appease a regime guilty of "state-sponsored terrorism".

But the readjustment in attitude and outlook has been instant. One of the first American entities to issue a statement about the development was Major League Baseball, with a clipped declaration that it had would monitor the events closely. It was hardly surprising. Major league baseball scouts are not permitted to search through Cuba's leagues for potential stars and since the revolution, professional sport has been banned in the country. The excellence of the Cuban national baseball team was there to serve as a source of pride for the regime, rather than to make its practitioners rich.

Vast promise

Little wonder, then, that Aroldis Chapman absented himself from the Cuban team while on tour in the Netherlands five years ago, took up temporary domicile in Andorra and then signed a contract with the Cincinnati Reds worth $30 million (€24.5 million). Last season, 19 Cuban-born players lined out for major league baseball teams: five appeared in the All-Star teams. In order to play major league, they had to defect from their native country, just like thousands of their compatriots for whom the vast promise of opportunity and a chance to make a living in America was irresistible.

Geography has given Cuba-US relationship it’s turbulent and dramatic connection. The island sits just 90 miles of the US mainland – thus ideally positioned as a location of menace and threat when Kennedy and Khruschev played double-bluff during the 1962 missile crisis. But for decades before that, it had been a frequent stopping point for American sailors who, along with Cuban students returning from the US, brought baseball to the island. The baseball link was well established by the time Castro came to power: Cuba had its own league as early as 1878. But just as the proximity to the United States introduced the game, the short hop across the ocean also convinced Cubans that the danger of leaving – by makeshift raft, by cigarette boat, by the dubious and dangerous arrangements of smugglers – was worth risking their lives and worth the pain of not knowing if they would see their families again.

Yasiel Puig thought so. The account of his departure from Cuba in 2012 is grippingly chronicled by Scott Eden in ESPN's terrific online story from last April, No One Walks of This Island. Even his journey, by foot – along the wetlands by day and the beaches at night, avoiding crocodile swamps, police and coast guards, journeying across the Bay of Pigs to a given point where a boat was to magically appear and collect them – is an enormous travail. It would have been easier to turn back.

Prodigious talent

The only difference between Puig and the thousands of other young Cuban men who lit out for Florida was that he was, at 21, revered in his home country as a prodigious baseball talent ever since he hit 17 home runs in Cuba’s Serie Nacional in the 09/10 season. As a potential MLB recruit, he was a serious proposition. The main trick was getting him into the United States: he had already tried to defect five times before his successful entry. The nefarious, laborious means by which he was smuggled out of his homeland is an extraordinary story. In the end, he walked across the international bridge spanning the Rio Bravo and Rio Grande. He then officially signed a seven-year deal with the LA Dodgers worth $42 million and made his MLB debut last year. Puig has reportedly paid over $1 million to various backers and handlers. The outfielder has made a sensational impact for the Dodgers and has never directly spoken about the ordeal or consequences of his departure from Cuba. Even if you progress to Major League Baseball through the normal and more privileged means – the scouting system, college, the minor leagues – it takes exceptional mental resilience to make it through. That Puig could do what he did and then cope with the sheer strangeness of instant wealth and freedom and fame while absorbing the pressure to deliver as a player is hard to fathom.

Exodus gained momentum

By leaving Cuba, he joined list of

cabezas sucias,

or ‘dirty heads’, regarded as a disgrace to Cuba by the authorities. As far as the state goes, they simply don’t exist. But for Cubans back home, stars like the Hernandez brothers in the 1990s have made it to the dream world of baseball. The exodus gained momentum in 1991, when Cuba’s economy went into freefall following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rene Arocha took advantage of an emergency flight stop in Miami by walking off the plane and, shortly afterwards, signing for the Cardinals. Others followed his lead or dreamed of doing so. Cuban sports stars have an instant entry into American life but share with the thousands of Cuban immigrants the emotional hardship of being exiled from family and familiarity. The brokering of new renewed relationship means that exiled Cubans, even its AWOL baseball stars, will be able to return home more easily in the years ahead.

Whether it increases the Cuban influence in major league baseball is a different matter. When Bill Clinton attempted to soften mutual attitudes during his second term in the White House, an exhibition game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team was held in Havana in 1999. The game is a source of equal fascination in both countries. But the idea that Cuba is suddenly going to become a rich hunting ground for scouts seems unlikely. The Cuban authorities will be keen to protect both the quality of its national team and to ensure that its brightest stars don’t desert the Cuban league in droves. The finer points of how the MLB conducts business with Cuba is just one on the endless list of matters to be solved now and it may well come down to the oldest solution and one which Cuba desperately needs: cash. It is hard to see how Cuba will stop its best stars from jumping to the most glamorous and richest baseball league in the world.

The new relationship will almost certainly bring an end to the dangerous and dramatic night escapes which brought so many Cuban exiles to the United States. And it may take some time but the conciliation may give both Cuban and American baseball fans a chance to honour not the phantom career of Castro but the contribution of Minnie Minoso, who in 1949 became the first Cuban to play in the major leagues and the first ever black player with the Chicago White Sox. Becoming a seven-time All-Star, he made his last appearance for the club as recently as 1980. But at 89 years old, he is still waiting for a call to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Not even the Pope can swing that one.