Cuba and Fake News

Or...How the Incompetent or Biased U. S. News Media Hurts Both Democracy AND Cuba!!
{Wednesday, March 8th, 2017}

         The U. S. Coast Guard is besieged daily trying to desperately stop, contain or confiscate a renewed tsunami of illegal drugs bound for America's shores AND FOR its never-ending multitude of drug users and traffickers, as depicted by the above photo. Currently -- all across the U. S. -- big cities, little towns and even bucolic rural areas are being swamped by heroin and opioid overdoses.  SO GUESS WHAT NATION,  according to an updated report this month from the U. S. government...IS AMERICA'S BEST ALLY IN ITS NEVER-ENDING WAR ON DRUG? Shhhhhh, it's, uh, poor little Cuba. Uhhh...you didn't know that?? You're not supposed to know that but if the U. S. government had issued an updated report critical of Cuba, you would have heard and read all about it in both the mainstream U. S. media and in the most ubiquitous and best-funded myriad of anti-Cuban/pro-Batistiano blogs!! The weirdly biased and intimidated U. S. news media -- considered so vital to the preservation of Democracy by the Founding Fathers -- as well as the lushly funded anti-Cuban blogs -- not only lie about Cuba but a biased or incompetent media probably constitutes the greatest threat to America's democracy, and is also...coincidentally...a huge threat to poor little Cuba!! 

           Yet, even in the U. S. and even regarding Cuba, there are exceptions to the rule in the mainstream U. S. media and in blogs...such as, well, this one, the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Engage Cuba, Along the Malecon, etc. Such an exception in the mainstream U S. media concerns a major article in The Denver Post on the eve of this week's start of the World Baseball Classic. Please permit me to explain.

      The 4th World Baseball Classic, which is played every four years, got underway this week. It involves sixteen nations -- including Cuba, the island nation that in decades past dominated international baseball competitions such as the Pan Am Games, the Olympics and was the team to beat when the WBC was hatched by the U. S. Major Leagues sixteen years ago. Since 1959, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution over the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Revolutionary Cuba has survived CIA and Mafia-plotted assassination attempts, the April-1961 Bay of Pigs attack, the economic embargo-blockade that originated in 1962 and exists to this day, multitudes of unchecked terrorists acts such as the bombing of the Cuban civilian airliner in Oct.-1976, etc. But Cuba's renown as a producer of baseball talent and for its dominating national teams existed until the year 1998.

   

    On March 23, 1998 the New York Yankees, America's richest and most iconic baseball team, signed the best pitcher in Cuba -- Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. He quickly became the Yankees' ace pitcher with a 12-4 record in 1998, a 17-9 record in 1999, etc. Cuba's other two best pitchers -- Orlando's half-brother Livan Hernandez and Jose Contreras -- also quickly defected and signed with U. S. Major League teams, also quickly becoming multi-millionaires and very successful Major League pitchers. So, the Yankees' signing of El Duque in 1998 ushered in an unending avalanche of defections by Cuba's baseball stars enticed by Major League teams, along with money-crazed human traffickers. Prior to 1998, much more quietly, Cubans like Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva, Luis Tiant, Tony Perez, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, etc., etc. had been Cuban superstars in the U. S.

   But "El Duque's" 1998 signing by the Yankees began the wholesale decimation of Cuba's baseball stars overwhelmed with lures to defect to the U. S. -- lures such as totally guaranteed upfront contracts, even to Cuban teenagers, that reached $80 million or more, the type of guaranteed money that, of course, to this day, captures the attention of unsavory human traffickers. El Duque, born in Cuba in 1965, was already past his prime in 1998 when the NY Yankees made him an instant multi-millionaire, but El Duque was still being paid $7 million a year by the NY Mets in 2008. Today the Mets' best Cuban player, Yoenis Cespedes, has a guaranteed $30 million-a-year deal, dwarfing El Duque's many $millions$.   

        In the World Baseball Classic starting this week, Cuba's best veteran star who, for some reason, hasn't yet defected to the U. S. is Alfredo Despaigne, this slugger. Alfredo belted three home runs in the last WBC back in 2013. This year his former superstar teammates in Cuba are now American Major Leaguers.
           Cuba's WBC opener was played Tuesday morning EST and broadcast before daylight on the MLB network from a wild, sold-out Tokyo Dome. Cuba lost 11-6 to the powerful Japanese team but Alfredo Despaigne went 2-for-4 with a home run for Cuba. Alfredo is a fan favorite in Japan because he plays there in its top professional league but, eschewing U. S. MLB offers, he returns to play as a rich man in Cuba.

        Another star for Cuba in the opening 11-6 loss at Japan Tuesday, March 7th was 19-year-old budding superstar Yoelqui Cespedes, the half-brother of New York Mets' superstar Yoenis Cespedes. Yoelqui is #16 above shown scoring a run against Japan. He went 3-for-4 with a double and made scouts drool.

      Early this Wednesday morning -- March 8th, 2017 -- in a game that finished at about 1:30 A. M. Cuban time Team Cuba easily beat China 6-0 in its second game in the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo, Japan.

#47, Yurisbel Gracial, led Cuba's offense vs. China.

Cuba out-hit China 14-to-1.

      In the win against China this morning Yoelqui Cespedes opened the scoring in the 5th inning with an RBI single after he had 3 hits in the tough 11-6 opening loss to host Japan. A speedy right-fielder, Yoelqui is just 19-years-old and the half-brother of the New York Mets' superstar Yoenis Cespedes. There are a lot of Major League scouts...and probably some human traffickers...watching Yoelqui very closely in Japan where Cuba's third game will be Friday morning. Baseball scouts from America and also from Japan salivate over Cuba's baseball talent and human traffickers love America's Batistiano-inspired Cuban laws. 

    

     Born in Newport Beach, California in 1991 and a star player at El Toro High School, Nolan Arenado is now a Super superstar at age 25 in the U. S. Major Leagues for the Colorado Rockies. How super? He already has four Gold Gloves as the best defensive third baseman in the National League. In 2015 he hit 42 home runs and had 130 runs-batted-in. In 2016 he hit 41 homers and had 133 RBI. Arenado has Cuban ancestry but he is among a vast array of Major League WBC superstars who will be playing elsewhere. 

Nolan Arenado on offense.

Nolan Arenado on defense.

      Back in November of 2016 this photo shows Nolan Arenado playing stick baseball on a street in Cuba with avid everyday Cubans. Nolan was, in fact, in Cuba the night Fidel Castro died at age 90 on Nov. 25th, 2016. Nolan's father Fernando, before defecting to the U. S., had served time in a Cuban prison as an anti-Castro dissident. {His mother is Puerto Rican}. Nolan, now the 25-year-old Major League superstar, longed to visit Cuba, a dream he finally fulfilled three months ago. A long and brilliant article in the The Denver Post on March 5th, 2017 written by Patrick Saunders told the emotional story of Nolan's visit to Cuba. Nolan is being paid $11,750,000.00 this year by the Colorado Rockies and he makes million more in endorsements. Next year Nolan's salary will be $17,500,000.00 and by 2020 when he is 28-years-old he becomes a free agent when all 30 Major League teams can bid for him and, thus, his salaries will likely exceed $30 million a year. That money made Nolan cry on his visit to Cuba where he realizes the average everyday salary on the island is about $30 a month. It's a vast disparity that touched Nolan's heart.

      On his visit to Cuba, Nolan Arenado took along 24 members of his family, 12 of whom are shown above on a Cuban beach. The three photos of Nolan and his family in Cuba are courtesy of the Arenado Family.

     This jolly photo shows members of the Arenado Family swimming in Cuba. They toured the island from Havana in the northwest to the city of Guantanamo in the southeast where the pre-revolutionary Arenado Family once ran a store, which remains as a dilapidated replica of the Batista-to-Castro transition. The journeys in a Chinese-made modern tour bus were all made during the daylight hours because the urban roads in Cuba were considered too rough and dangerous for nighttime travel although, otherwise, Cuba is one of the world's safest nations and is almost devoid of crime, gangs and illegal drugs, as the U. S. report stipulated. Nolan Arenado euphorically told the Denver Post how "wonderful" the Cuban people are. Nolan handed out a plethora of brand-new sports equipment. He recalled, amid unabashed tears back in Denver, how he handed a new soccer ball to a Cuban boy who "burst out just crying over his new possession."  

       A multi-millionaire SUPER superstar with the Colorado Rockies, the 25-year-old Nolan Arenado will be playing for the USA in the World Baseball Classic that started this week. If Nolan and the USA play the depleted Cuban team in the WBC, Nolan and the USA win will. But, more importantly, I wonder what Nolan will be thinking when and if he plays against the Cubans? He told The Denver Post he will be returning to Cuba to hand out more sports equipment to Cuban youngsters. You see, Nolan is both a compassionate young man and a very rich one. Moreover, he wants to make more Cubans "burst out crying." GOOD FOR HIM!! America needs men like Nolan Arenado in the United States Congress and...in the White House.

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