How do cuban baseball players defect

Agency Insider. Don't miss a brief. Sign up for our daily email. Your Email. Contributors Become a Contributor. After a smattering of defections during the Cold War, the exodus picked up pace after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early s. Since Rene Arocha left the national team at the airport in Miami in for a career in the United States, about two or three players a year have deserted their country.

Nine jumped ship in Those players are consistently regarded as traitors. Some have left legally, an option that became possible with immigration reform in , but which was starkly curtailed when flights were reduced because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Not only has the number of players seeking careers abroad exploded, but their profiles are different: they are younger and not always destined for major league stardom, according to Romero. Those who have left have faced criticism on social media, but many Cubans have simply wished them well; they are all too aware of how difficult life is in Cuba at the moment, with major shortages of food and medicine.

Earlier this year, when Cuba's national team came to the United States to play Olympic qualifying games, top talent Cesar Prieto, two other players and the team psychologist defected. Cuba, a three-time Olympic champion and time Baseball World Cup winner, failed for the first time to qualify for the Summer Games in Tokyo. For Luis Daniel del Risco, currently the highest-ranking official in the Cuban baseball federation, there is "a war" under way to "destroy Cuban baseball.

He slammed what he called "a harassment campaign" by foreign recruiters, who attend most games that Cuba plays abroad. They leave "without their passports, which are held by the delegation," Romero said. And all are barred from coming home to Cuba for eight years. Many more Cuban defectors have played in the lower-status minor leagues of baseball, and some never translate their skills in Cuba to big-time baseball in the US.

The most recent story of massive success is Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox, who won the Most Valuable Player award in the American League 30 top-tier clubs are divided into two leagues, the other called the National League. He was sent back down two weeks ago in the up-again-down-again world of US baseball. During the administration of President Barack Obama, the US moved toward normalizing long-strained relations with Cuba.

Major League Baseball worked out an agreement to welcome Cuban baseball players without the need for them to defect. But former President Donald Trump reversed course on those changes and forced the cancelation of such agreements. President Biden, despite noting that Trump "inflicted harm on the Cuban people," has not made a shift in Cuba policy one of his foreign policy priorities. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw.

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