Cuba has for the first time 3 baseball players who have fled the island have been named to the roster for next year’s pre-season World Baseball Classic.
As official media in Cuba Andy Ibañez, Yoan López and Elian Leyva are the first expatriate Cuban baseball players to have confirmed their participation in a preparatory tournament set to prepare for the V World Baseball Classic (WBC) in March next year
Andy Ibanez and Yoan Lopez both play in US Major League Baseball after defecting from the communist-run island nation in 2014. Cuban exile Elian Leyva, who plays in Mexico, was also nominated for Cuba’s selection.
Cuba traditionally bars its sports stars from pursuing lucrative professional careers abroad, prompting many to leave their homes, often while traveling abroad for the national team.
A record number of Cuban baseball players fled last year when about half of the 24-man U23 national baseball team disappeared at the World Cup in Mexico.
Athletes from other sports such as boxing and track and field have also defected.
Over the past decade, Cuba has softened its hostility to professional football, particularly baseball, Cuba’s national sport.
Detroit Tigers infielder Ibanez and New York Mets pitcher Lopez, both 29, are now the first Cuban players, along with Elian Leyva, who plays for Naranjeros de Hermosillo in Mexico in the major foreign professional leagueswho were called up by Havana for the national team.
In 2013, the Cuban government agreed to allow its players to sign for teams in foreign leagues in a bid to stem the flow of defectors since former President Fidel Castro abolished professional sport in the country following the 1959 communist revolution.
In December 2018, MLB and the Cuban Federation signed an agreement that would have allowed Cuban players to sign for MLB teams in return for payment to the Cuban Baseball Federation.
However, Donald Trump’s administration has blocked the agreement, arguing that the payments would effectively go to the Cuban regime, which is subject to US sanctions.
In May, however, another agreement was reached between the Cuban federation and baseball’s world governing body, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, allowing Cuban baseball players to manage their own professional contracts in foreign leagues.
Relations between Washington and Havana have eased slightly since Joe Biden took office in the White House, and earlier this year even the US Embassy in Cuba reopened after being closed under Trump in 2017.
The winners of the WBC are considered world champions of the sport. Cuba has never won the competition in its four previous editions, but is a three-time Olympic champion and won the World Championship 25 times before it was dissolved in favor of the WBC. The next edition of the WBC will take place in March 2023.
No other players have been announced on the pre-tournament shortlist, but local media claims that Yasmany Tomas, a former Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder, and Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Miguel Antonio Vargas will be called up.
