Toward a Third Cuban Wave

The implications for major league baseball of the US change in policy direction signaled by President Obama's decision to establish diplomatic relations and to eliminate or reduce many restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba include the likelihood of a "third wave" of Cuban players coming to the United States--although how soon remains to be seen--as well as the possibility of major league teams establishing a presence in the still-Communist-but-interested-in-promoting foreign investment Caribbean island nation. Should Cuba become open for major league business, however, the realistic opportunities might very well be tempered by potentially significant uncertainties.

Toward a Third Cuban Wave

Before the Castro Revolution in 1959, Cuba was at the leading edge of the globalization of major league baseball. As noted in a previous post on April 14, "The First Cuban Wave" (see link at the end of this article), integration proved to be the catalyst for an unprecedented influx of players from Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s, many of them black Latinos, all of whom had left Cuba in hopes of a big league career before or in the first chaotic year or two after Fidel Castro's seizure of power in 1959. The first wave of Cuban players making it big in the major leagues was effectively over by the mid-1960s as a result of Castro's crackdown on political liberties, which included severe travel restrictions to make it difficult if not generally impossible for Cubans to flee his repressive regime, but not before outstanding players like Minnie Minoso, Camilo Pascual, Tony Oliva, Tony Perez, Bert Campaneris, Mike Cuellar and Luis Tiant had left Cuba to play ball in the United States.

The next generation of Cuban-born players in the major leagues, including Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, were mostly raised in the United States after arriving as children on the so-called "freedom flights" from the mid-1960s to early-1970s that were organized by the US and tolerated by Castro as a way to diffuse dissent in Cuba. Love of the game was perhaps in their Cuban genetic makeup, but they learned the game on American diamonds.

Meanwhile, in the face of the US embargo, the excellence of its baseball league became a major foundation of Cuba's revolutionary identity. Cuba continued to impress the  baseball world in international tournaments and many players on its national team were considered likely capable of playing in the major leagues, lack of opportunity notwithstanding.

Motivated by the challenge, the money and a desire to choose their own destiny and not be constrained by a repressive regime, a "second Cuban wave" to the major leagues, characterized by top-rated players from Cuba's national team taking significant risks to defect from their home, took off in the mid-1990s and continues to this day. Pitchers Livan Hernandez (signed by the Marlins in 1996) and Orlando Hernandez (signed by the Yankees in 1998) were among the first prominent defectors. Although players from the Dominican Republic have dominated the trend, defecting Cuban players have contributed to the accelerating pace of globalization in major league baseball in the last 25 years.

The sea change in policy towards Cuba that the President announced makes it likely there will soon be a third wave of Cuban players coming legitimately to the United States, without having to defect. In anticipation of this development, Major League Baseball institutionally was farsighted enough that eight years ago MLB officials were considering options should US sanctions against Cuba be lifted. Among the issues addressed were the need for a systematic process for signing Cuban players, the possibility of teams establishing baseball academies in Cuba like those they have in the Dominican Republic, and perhaps even the establishment of a minor league team there. (An article in The New York Times on April 26, 2007 reported on this initiative: see http://www.nytihttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/sports/baseball/26cuba.htmlmes.com/2007/04/26/sports/baseball/26cuba.html.)

No doubt there are Cuban players who would be among the best in the major leagues if given the opportunity, like recent defectors Yasiel Puig and 2014 AL Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu. But notwithstanding the Cuban national team's international reputation, the overwhelming majority of players in the Cuban league are probably not close to even marginal major league players in their level of talent and development. Cuba failed to reach the final tournament in the last two World Baseball Classics in 2009 and 2013. The Times article cited above reported that major league scouts in 2007 assessed the overall level of competition in the Cuban league to approximate that of Double-A minor league ball in the US.

The current regime appears amenable to allowing Cubans to play in the United States, preferably in an arrangement where the regime would be allowed to profit from the major league contracts given to Cuban players, either by directly brokering deals through government agents or by a posting system similar to MLB's relationship with the Japanese leagues. (See the December 14 article in Baseball America, "How Will MLB Handle Big Changes in Cuba," http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/mlb-will-handle-big-changes-cuba/.) Such an arrangement could be problematic from the US perspective, however, especially if the current regime outlast the lives of Fidel and brother Raul (who replaced the ailing Fidel as top dog in 2006).

While President Obama has the executive authority to remove or ease many restrictions on interactions with Cuba by US-based persons and businesses, Congressional action to roll back legislated sanctions is likely to be required before meaningful commercial activity is possible. Pending such action--a process likely to be bedeviled by political considerations, specifically partisan push back and bipartisan concerns about human rights, democratization and respect for private business interests--the US trade embargo remains in effect, almost certainly precluding major league baseball from moving quickly, perhaps not even any time soon, to take advantage of the thaw in political relations.

As for the possibility of Cuba becoming a market for major league baseball (in addition to being a new talent pool for major league teams), establishing a minor league franchise in Cuba could ultimately set the stage for a scenario where a financially-struggling franchise might play part of its schedule in Havana, similar to when the Expos played 22 games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in their last two years in Montreal before becoming the Washington Nationals. While that would certainly test whether Cuba could eventually support a major league team, either such development would require that Cuba after the Castros be politically stable.

The legacy of the Cuban Revolution, however, and the political and economic prerogatives that Cuban leaders have come to enjoy from more than half-a-century of repressive Communist rule, not to mention the mixed record of many former Soviet Bloc countries since the collapse of the USSR, suggests a strong possibility that the transition to a post-Castro Cuba might be a time of turmoil and trouble.

Political instability and an unstable business environment would not be conducive to a major league presence--including baseball academies--in Cuba. In that case, there would still be a third wave of Cuban players leaving Cuba in hopes of a big league career, although they would more likely be calculating that their best bet was to escape their country's turmoil rather than be part of an orderly systematic approach engineered by major league baseball to manage the signing of Cuban players.

The following is the link to the "First Cuban Wave" article on Baseball Historical Insight on April 14, 2014:

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-first-cuban-wave.html

The First Cuban Wave

The April 15 anniversary of Jackie Robinson's big league debut is a reminder that breaking the color barrier also opened the door to the major leagues for Cuban players--most of the best of whom were black.  The first wave of Cubans in major league baseball that began in the 1950s effectively ended in the mid-1960s as a result of Castro's slamming shut the exit door for Cubans less than enamored with his dictatorial rule.

The First Cuban Wave

At the time the Brooklyn Dodgers went to spring training in Havana in 1947 with Jackie Robinson certain to make their opening day roster, Cuba already had a long history of highly-competitive leagues dating to the early twentieth century that produced outstanding players clearly capable of playing at the major league level. Unlike in the United States, however, the Cuban leagues were not segregated, and the fact that many of the best Cuban players were "colored" put them off the map as far as major league baseball was concerned. The color of their skin meant that Cuban-born Martin Dihigo, Jose Mendez and Cristobal Torriente never played in the major leagues, but went to Cooperstown entirely on the basis of terrific careers in the Negro Leagues that were over before Branch Rickey took his shot at integrating (white) organized baseball with Robinson.

By the time Jackie stepped foot onto the Ebbets Field diamond in 1947, only 40 of the 8,039 players who had played in the big leagues had come from Cuba.  Given that they were born into a society where interracial couplings were neither unusual nor ostracized, it is quite likely that at least a handful of those 40 Cuban-born players were at least partially black; they would not, however, have been able to play in the Big Time if they could not pass for white.  If in the pre-integration era major league teams may have been willing to overlook the "swarthy" complexions of some of those Cuban players, they also gave them relatively short shrift in their opportunities to make good.  Of the 40 Cubans who played before Robinson got his chance, only two had appreciable time in the major leagues:  outfielder Armando Marsens, who played 655 games over eight years between 1911 and 1918, and right-hander Dolf Luque--the most prominent Cuban player the big leagues had yet to see, celebrated as "The Pride of Havana"--who had a 20-year big league career that ended in 1935 with a lifetime 194-175 record and a career value of 43.2 pitching wins above replacement.  When he pitched for Cincinnati, Luque was arguably the second-best pitcher in the National League after Dazzy Vance in the first half of the 1920s.

Major league integration proved the catalyst for an unprecedented influx of players from Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Minnie Minoso who made it for good as an outfielder with the Chicago White Sox in 1951. One of baseball's premier players over the next ten years, Minoso had a borderline Hall of Fame career; he was reconsidered by the Veterans Committee for enshrinement as recently as 2012. Certainly once Minoso became a star, Cubans quickly emerged as a new talent pool for the major leagues. The original Washington Senators--the one major league club that scouted Cuban players before integration--were ahead of the field in bringing to the major leagues talented players from the island nation, including pitchers Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos (neither was black), shortstop Zoilo Versalles and outfielder Tony Oliva, who they signed the same year the franchise moved to Minnesota and became the Twins.  Pascual was one of the best right-handers of his generation, leading the league in strikeouts each of the first three years the team played in Minnesota; Versalles won the MVP award in 1965 when the Twins went to the World Series; and Oliva led the American League in batting average in each of his first two seasons--1964 and 1965 (not including 16 cups of coffee before that)--before debilitating leg and knee injuries ultimately derailed a career that seemed destined for Hall of Fame honors.

By the mid-1960s there were about 30 Cuban-born players in major league baseball in any given season, making them the dominant foreign nationals in the game.  Pascual, Oliva, shortstops Bert Campaneris and Leo Cardenas, southpaw Mike Cuellar and right-hander-with-the-funky-delivery Luis Tiant took their place among baseball's best players that decade and the next.  Second basemen Tony Taylor, Tito Fuentes and Cookie Rojas; outfielders Tony Gonzalez and Jose Cardinal; catchers Joe Azcue and Paul Casanova; and pitchers Ramos, Diego Segui and Orlando Pena had long and distinguished big league careers.  And then there was Tony Perez of Big Red Machine fame, who broke in with the Reds in 1964 and is so far the only Cuban-born player in the Hall of Fame to have played in the major leagues.  It should be noted that all of these players were signed as free agents and had left Cuba for American diamonds before or in the first chaotic year or two after Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution.

Castro's crackdown on political opposition and Cuba's vibrant (albeit with a big dose of corruption) private sector, suppression of civil rights and liberties, and imposition of stringent travel restrictions making it difficult to leave the island nation led to a lost generation of Cuban players for major league baseball.  The Cuban generation most affected, because they came of age in the years when the Castro regime was most repressive and political tensions with the United States at their highest, were those born between 1950 and 1970--only 17 of whom played in the major leagues.  That compares to 49 born between 1930 and 1950 who wore big league uniforms.  After peaking with 32 Cubans playing in the major leagues in 1968, by 1975 there were only 14, only 8 in 1980, and a mere 3 Cubans in the big leagues in 1985.  After Tiant and Perez retired, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro--both of whose big league careers started in the mid-1980s--were next as the first prominent post-Castro Cuban-born players in the major leagues, but both grew up in the States after their families had fled Castro's Cuba on "freedom flights" organized by the US and accepted by the dictator as a way to defuse dissent.

It would be more than two decades after the early years of Castro's crackdown, however, before a second wave of Cuban-born players began to make their way into the major leagues.  While players in the first wave found themselves cut off from returning home and became exiles--often separated from their parents and extended families--the second wave of Cuban players had to chance the risks of defection where a failed attempt could cost them their baseball careers in Cuba (certainly on the national team that traveled abroad), their freedom, and even their lives--and they too were separated from their families, in some cases wives and children. There are currently 16 Cuban-born players in the major leagues.  Two of them, Oakland's Yoenis Cespedes and the White Sox' Alexei Ramirez hit late game-winning home runs for their teams on Sunday, April 13.