M.L.B.'s Cuba Trip to Include Jose Abreu, Star Who Defected

M.L.B.'s Cuba Trip to Include Jose Abreu, Star Who Defected
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DAVID WALDSTEIN DEC. 7, 2015

A good-will tour of Cuba next week by Major League Baseball and its
players' union will include a prominent Cuban player who defected in
2013, a rare concession by a Cuban government that typically denounces
such individuals as traitors and bars them from its national team.

The player, Jose Abreu, has established himself as one of baseball's
premier sluggers in his two seasons as the first baseman of the Chicago
White Sox. He will be joined on the good-will tour by at least two other
Cuban major leaguers: shortstop Alexei Ramirez, who left Cuba in 2007
but has said he does not consider himself a defector, and the journeyman
catcher and first baseman Brayan Pena, who left Cuba as a teenager in 1999.

A fourth Cuban major leaguer, Yasiel Puig, the Los Angeles Dodgers
slugger who defected in 2012, has also been mentioned as a participant
in the tour, but it was unclear if he would join the group. He is under
investigation by Major League Baseball after an altercation last month
at a Miami nightclub.

Cuba normally prohibits players who defect from re-entering the country
before eight years have passed, in part to discourage what has been a
steady stream of Cubans who have left in recent years, often by fleeing
the island by boat in dangerous journeys or by bolting at international
tournaments. It is rare, if not unprecedented, for a Cuban player active
in the major leagues to make a high-profile return to the island, and
Abreu's recent defection makes his participation in the tour
particularly notable.

Officials for Major League Baseball, working closely with their Cuban
counterparts, including Antonio Castro, who is a son of Fidel Castro as
well as a top baseball official, said they had secured assurances that
the Cuban players would be allowed to be part of the tour, although with
certain restrictions. They can visit with family members who live in
Cuba, for example, but only at a designated hotel.

The Cuban players also received assurances that they would be allowed to
leave the island when the tour was over, two people in baseball said,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because details of the trip had
not been completed and officially announced.

An email seeking comment from the Cuban Embassy in Washington was not
answered.

The tour, set for Dec. 15 to 18, represents the latest step by baseball
officials in the United States to create a working relationship with
their Cuban counterparts that could lead to an orderly system for Cuban
players seeking to join the major leagues.

The tour will include children's clinics and a charity event and will be
officially led by Joe Torre, who works in the commissioner's office as
the chief baseball officer, and Dave Winfield, a special adviser to the
union. They will be joined by the Cuban players and four other major
leaguers: Clayton Kershaw, Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz and Jon Jay.

The best-known Cuban player making the trip is Abreu, 28, who was the
American League rookie of the year in 2014.

Ramirez, a 34-year-old shortstop, was a mainstay in the White Sox'
lineup the last eight seasons and is now a free agent. Pena, a
33-year-old journeyman who left Cuba in 1999 with his father, has been a
catcher and a first baseman in the major leagues in a career that began
in 2005. He is signed with the St. Louis Cardinals for the 2016 season.

The tour is taking place against the backdrop of an effort by the United
States and Cuba to normalize relations. Commissioner Rob Manfred, taking
a cue from President Obama's administration, had baseball's top lawyer,
Dan Halem, meet with Antonio Castro in New York in October.

Other M.L.B. officials traveled to Cuba to examine the main stadium in
Havana and determine whether it would be feasible for a major league
team to play a spring training game there in 2016 against Cuban players.

Although the officials reported back to Manfred that the field at the
stadium would need to be upgraded, the effort to hold a spring training
game in Cuba has moved ahead.

At the same time, a veteran minor league executive, Lou Schwechheimer,
is leading an effort to put a minor league team in Havana, perhaps as
early as 2017.

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Schwechheimer has secured the exclusive rights from Minor League
Baseball to return professional baseball to Havana. He has assembled a
group called the Caribbean Baseball Initiative, which includes two
former American ambassadors and is working with Cuban officials.

Despite all this movement, an American trade embargo, in place for more
than five decades, continues to block most commercial ties with Cuba and
may limit many of the efforts by American baseball officials to gain a
foothold on the island.

Still, the interest is there. In mid-November, with numerous major
league teams clamoring to be the one chosen to go to Cuba for the spring
training game, Manfred resorted to picking a ball out of a bin to decide.

The winner was the Tampa Bay Rays, a selection that carried extra weight
because the area around St. Petersburg, Fla., where the Rays play, has a
significant Cuban imprint that predates the rise of Fidel Castro in the
late 1950s.

However, it is still not certain that the game will occur, with more
negotiations still necessary. Beyond that, much give-and-take is still
needed between American and Cuban baseball authorities before any
significant deal might be reached that would allow Cuban players to move
freely between the two countries and play in the major leagues. Cuba
would presumably want to be compensated for allowing players to leave.

Although officials from the Obama administration and Major League
Baseball have expressed some optimism that an arrangement will
eventually come to pass, some experts on Cuba remain skeptical that
current Cuban policy will change in the foreseeable future.

But for now, there will be a good-will tour with some notable American
baseball names, including at least one from Cuba.

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2015, on page
B9 of the New York edition with the headline: M.L.B.'s Cuba Trip to
Include Abreu, Star Who Defected. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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