One of the side aspects of the Obama Administration’s decision to loosen the Cuban trade embargo, will be the sudden availability of talented baseball players who will be able to freely join Major League Baseball teams.
How that is going to happen though remains to be seen. The National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association were able to legally get Soviet Union players in the late 1980s thanks to international diplomacy both on the official level and through cable TV news and a sporting event.
As of now, there doesn’t seem to be anyone connected with Major League Baseball who could do what John Whitehead did in hockey or Ted Turner achieved in basketball. But Cuba is a big player in the international baseball season and Fidel Castro loves baseball so there may be an opening somewhere which will get Cuban players to the United States or Canada quickly.
This article was republished with permission from the author and original publisher, Evan Weiner.