"The player who speaks here is not Omar Linares but the son of a country who rejected a contract of $40 million to make himself a professional."
-- Fidel Castro, April 5, 1999
PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba -- They are the last of baseball's Cold Warriors, these rapidly aging veterans of the Cuban league, these towering legends that Fidel Castro holds up as proof of his socialist Revolution remains viable even as Cuba becomes increasingly isolated in the world community.
|  | | It's a moment like winning a gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games that keep Omar Linares, left, and Orestes Kindelan playing baseball for the Cuban national team. |
Men of principle, Castro likes to say. Men like Omar Linares.
At 33, Linares is no longer the player he was a few years ago when he was sometimes regarded as the best third baseman on the planet. He's grown a little belly and his knees are weakened from years of seemingly non-stop baseball. It's been a few years since the New York Yankees offered what Linares claims was $40 million to sign with the team.
But the agents and major-league teams leave him alone now, because they have learned Linares is not apt to defect. He has made his choice to stay in this dusty town in the heart of Cuba's tobacco region. Everything seems green here except, of course, the currency.
"There are people who can't be bought with money," Linares said as he leans back in a rocking chair on his porch, "and I'm one of them."
A teenage boy passes by and nods at the national hero, and Linares waves in return. Like other Cuban stars who have chosen to remain behind, Linares is not unaware of what he waved goodbye to by not following in the path of Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, Rolando Arrojo, Osvaldo Fernandez and other Cuban defectors now playing in Major League Baseball.
Linares and the others know about the $14.5 million contract the Cleveland Indians lavished on Danys Baez, who was no better than the third-best pitcher on the Pinar del Rio team that Linares plays for in Cuba's National Series, the country's highest level of competition. They've heard of the $6 million the Yankees threw at Adrian Hernandez, who was maybe the 20th best pitcher on the island, and the $4.4 million ventured on Andy Morales, a young third baseman now in the Yankees' farm system.
How could they not know? Players don't even have to leave the island these days to understand what's on the other side of the great geopolitical divide. One of the measures the government has taken to improve the conditions of baseball players since they started defecting 10 years ago is to put them in tourist hotels for road games in the National Series. Those hotels offer ESPN, picked up by satellite, in both Spanish and English.
The government restricts its citizens' access to the Internet. But the athletes, privileged and connected, somehow find their way on the information highway.
"I was looking at the Internet one day and I read that the manager of the Atlanta Braves said in an interview that if he had a relief pitcher like Pedro Luis Lazo, he could win the World Series," said Pedro Luis Lazo, Pinar's hulking stopper.
|
WITNESS TO A DEFECTION
|
|
To understand to the issues of Cuban baseball defectors, ESPN.com approached agent Joe Kehoskie in January about his effort to orchestrate the impending departure of pitcher Rolando Viera.
ESPN cameras followed the story as it unfolded, filming in New York, Florida, Boston and Cuba, and interviewing Viera after he arrived in the U.S. in late April.
Watch the exclusive, behind-the-scenes report by ESPN.com senior writer Tom Farrey on "Outside the Lines," Thursday at 8 p.m. ET. It re-airs on Sunday at 3:30 a.m. ET (12:30 a.m. Pacific) and Tuesday, July 24 at 1 p.m. ET.
|
Still, few of them make the leap to riches. Since pitcher Rene Arocha declared his independence on July 4, 1991, more than 50 players -- some high-profile stars, others little-known teenage prospects -- have defected from Cuba. But that's a small fraction of the talent capable of catching on with a major-league organization.
"Right now, Cuba is like no place on earth," said Joe Kehoskie, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based agent who specializes in representing Cuban defectors. "I mean, the comparison I make is that in the Dominican Republic right now, there's something like 1,200 to 1,400 baseball players under professional contracts, from the Dominican rookie leagues to the major leagues. Right now there's something like 35 Cubans under professional contracts."
That's for an island country with more citizens (11 million) than the Dominican (8 million) and a better infrastructure for grooming talent. In Cuba, prospects as young as 12 years old are placed in baseball academies that focus on developing their skills.
Castro, whose passion for the game makes him the de facto commissioner of baseball in Cuba, has bragged that enough talent remains in Cuba to fill as many as five major-league teams. He's been able to hold on to them because, in part, many of them say they appreciate what makes Cuban baseball unique.
"I think I have an infinite number of reasons to keep playing here in Cuba," said Jose Contreras, Pinar's top pitcher and the player who shut down the Baltimore Orioles for eight innings in a Havana exhibition in April 1999. The Cubans eventually lost to the Orioles, 3-2, in extra innings. "One of the strongest, I believe, is that I'm not treated like merchandise, like I was something that they can buy today and sell tomorrow."
Players in Cuba aren't traded, and they aren't free agents. They often spend their entire careers with one team, usually the provincial team they grew up following. They play in stadiums that come alive during games with music and non-stop noise, filled not by executives doing business in luxurious corporate suites but by some of the most knowledgeable baseball fans in the world -- sort of the way American baseball was a half-century ago.
Before the Revolution in 1959, baseball was an impoverished game outside of the financial and political capital of Havana. Castro took the game to the countryside and the mountains, building stadiums that allowed the game to grow and thrive. He made sports one of the three pillars of Cuban society. It's importance equals that of education and health care.
|  | | Pitcher Jose Contreras says he remains in Cuba because 'I'm not treated like merchandise, like I was something that they can buy today and sell tomorrow.' |
Contreras is the son of a father who is a farmer and a mother who works in a tobacco factory.
"I come from a humble family," he said. "I think I owe this to the Revolution. It's helped me. I've been world champion, Olympic champion, Central American champion, thanks to the Revolution."
That, of course, is exactly what the government wants him to say -- no matter if he means it.
"All of them want (to defect), but it is very difficult," said Adrian Hernandez, a former Havana Industriales player who made his rookie debut with the Yankees this season.
To desert Cuba usually involves deserting a family. Hernandez, who defected in January 2000 by fooling Cuban authorities into thinking he was taking a vacation in Guatemala, said he left his wife and 1-year-old daughter because he wanted to give his daughter a better life than he was provided. He's now working on trying to get them to the U.S. where they can be reunited at his Tampa, Fla., home.
But in most cases, families are left behind, either because they don't want to leave their home or because the Cuban government won't let them go. The possibility of forcing his wife and now 14-year-old daughter to fend for themselves was too much of a sacrifice for Lazaro Valle, the hard-throwing righthander who is considered by some to be the premier Cuban pitcher of his era.
Like Linares, Valle, 37, is past his prime. The overtures from agents and major-league teams have dried up. He's made his choice, and he says he's comfortable with it.
"They were very tempting offers, in truth," Valle said. "It's just that, for me, there's nothing better than the warmth of your family and your loved ones."
Lazaro Vargas, Valle's longtime teammate on Industriales and the national team, said some defectors have told him they regret leaving.
"I've been able to talk to some of them and they're dying of nostalgia," said Vargas, a third baseman for the past 21 years with Industriales. "They start to miss their families, to miss their friends, to miss where they were born. I think that when you lose that, you've lost half your life."
|  | | Raimundo Silverio teaches his son, Josue, to play baseball in Havana, Cuba were baseball is a popular national pastime. |
Ironically, the top Cuban stars are rewarded for their loyalty with a lifestyle akin to, well, an imperialist. Valle lives in a comfortable home in Guanabo Beach, on the outskirts of Havana. The walled-in house has a garden, carport and TV room -- nothing that would make a major-league player envious but the stuff of dreams in Cuba where many citizens live in conditions reminiscent of South African shantytowns .
"Before the Revolution, only white people in this neighborhood," Valle said, waving at the adjacent homes.
He is proud of his status in Cuban society.
"It's true, I have a pretty house," he said. "I thank the state a lot for that. You have to recognize that in Cuba, the government pays certain determined, special attention to its athletes. And more when they're veterans who have played for a time on the national team."
Philosophically egalitarian Cuba strains to keep its top players. Linares' new car, a burgundy sedan, shines like a ruby amid the dingy melange of Chinese bicycles and 1950s Chevys that pass by his home along the main drag through town. His clothes are mall-quality, comfortable and colorful. And for incidentals, he's paid 600 pesos a month, twice that of an average worker, whose pay is the equivalent of $144 a year.
This year, Cuba's sports ministry created the Athlete Care Commission, designed to provide special benefits to athletes unavailable to the general population.
"Not only are they taking care of the ballplayers but also the ballplayer's family," said Martin Hacthoun, a Cuban sportswriter. "If the mother is sick, she is rushed to the hospital. Or if they need cement for repairing their houses, they get the repair."
Athletes feel a little more free to speak their mind than they were a few years ago, as well. While criticism of the government remains taboo, it's now common to hear Cuban athletes publicly express respect -- even affection -- for former teammates who have defected and are regarded by the government as traitors.
"They are still my brothers," Valle said.
Like other Cuban players, Valle has a perverse pride in the achievements of defectors. Yes, those desertions have weakened the national team and shaken baseball officials, who were so determined to avoid defections at last year's Sydney Olympics that they sent a team made up primarily of older players and true believers -- a team that then gave up the gold to a U.S. team comprised of minor leaguers and journeymen. Resentment persists toward Arrojo for leaving them in the lurch in 1996. Arrojo, the team's No. 1 starter, jumped ship in Atlanta just days before the Olympics began.
But every time a defector succeeds in the major leagues, it serves as further confirmation of what the players have long suspected, that they are good enough to play on the world's premier stage.
"Good pitchers have come from Cuba (to the U.S.), but not the best ones," Lazo said. "The best pitchers in Cuba are still here."
That's more than ego talking. El Duque, the Yankees' bedrock in recent post-seasons, was 129-47 with a 3.05 ERA in 10 seasons with Industriales, but he was in the autumn of his career when he defected in 1998. Last season, there were a half-dozen pitchers with lower ERAs, led by young Maels Rodriguez (1.77 ERA) from the mountain town of Sancti Spiritus. He struck out an average of 10 batters a game with a fastball said to reach 101 miles an hour.
|  | | Baseball remains a pillar of Cuban society, as important as education and health care. |
"El Duque was a great pitcher in Cuba, but there was something missing," Lazo said. "I mean, El Duque was the best of Cuba when he was pitching in Cuba. However, he wasn't as effective in international events. That's why I say he wasn't the best of Cuba."
The team most decimated by defections in recent years, ironically, is the one that plays right under Castro's nose. Industriales, the powerhouse team from the capital city, has lost four of its top pitchers in the past four years, in Orlando and Adrian Hernandez (who are not related), Mayque Quintero and Rolando Viera, plus infielder Evel Bastida. This, despite the 1996 conviction of Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, a baseball agent who is serving 15 years in a Cuban prison for encouraging El Duque and other Industriales players to defect.
Valle has watched his teammates leave, one by one. Yet he hasn't budged. It's not because he didn't have his chance. As evidence, he relates an anecdote from 1993 when the Cuban national team was in Miami and he stayed out all night at a friend's party across town. Cuban security was frantic, certain that this former roommate of Arocha's had defected. The next morning, they found him waiting for the team at their airport gate where the team was departing.
Cuban security was incredulous.
"It had to be seen that I've got a lot of balls," Valle said.
And just enough incentive not to bust those of Fidel Castro.
Tom Farrey is a Senior Writer with ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn.com.
|
|
|
