Via the Cuba-to-U. S. Pipeline!
This Cuban teenager, Luis Robert, became an instant multi-millionaire this weekend -- Saturday, May 20th, 2017. He took the same route -- the well-trod baseball path to America -- dozens of other young Cubans have taken just in the last few years.
Cuba has long been a gold-mine for baseball players, with the gold awaiting them in the United States where even the poorest of the 30 Major League teams have many millions of dollars to lavish on prospects. Luis Robert has been hotly pursued -- by scouts, agents and, yes, even human traffickers.
After leaving Cuba months ago, yesterday -- May 20-2017 -- was the first day the well-scouted Luis Robert was eligible to be signed by U. S. teams, and that took only a few minutes. The Chicago White Sox quickly inked Luis to a guaranteed contract, estimated to be worth between $35 and $50 million. Now 19-years-old, Luis is a speedy 6-foot-3, 185-pound center-fielder. He'll begin his pro career for a White Sox Minor League team but all the money in his first contract is totally guaranteed and he figures to follow in the footsteps of other Cubans such as Aroldis Chapman of the New York Yankees and Yoenis Cespedes of the New York Mets who got huge signing bonuses and have now been given other long-term contracts worth around $25 million a year, not counting endorsement money that is also lavished on Major League players. The Chicago White Sox, now Luis Robert's American team, have long cherished Cuban players.
The top prospect for the White Sox and for the entire baseball world is this Cuban, Yoan Moncada. He turns 22 next week -- on May 27th, 2017. A powerful switch-hitter with tremendous speed, Yoan is 6-foot-2, 205 pounds. He is currently the superstar on the White Sox's top farm team -- Triple-A Charlotte -- but was put on the DL last week with a minor injury. Soon, he'll be the next Chicago White Sox superstar.
This photo shows Yoan Moncada the day he signed his first U. S. pro contract with the Boston Red Sox. The deal guaranteed Yoan exactly $31.5 million and Boston also had to pay Major League Baseball another $31.5 million in penalties because even the money-crazed U. S. teams are trying to reduce outrageous sums guaranteed to young players from Cuba who are not drafted and thus can sign with the highest bidder, not just the team that drafts them as is done with U. S. prospects. But Boston, without blinking an eye, shelled out $63 million to sign Yoan and then, when the Red Sox wanted the super-ace lefty pitcher Chris Sale from Chicago, they traded him to the White Sox, which covets Cubans as do the other teams.
When young Cuban baseball players suddenly have millions-of-dollars, they can splurge in the United States. Ask Alex Vega who owns a luxury-car dealership in Miami. Shortly after Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban superstar with the New York Mets, famously bought a fleet of luxury cars from Mr. Vega, so did the newly rich Yoan Moncada. That's Yoan in the red shirt the day he tried out three of the luxury cars he had just purchased from Mr. Vega. The white car on the left with the red-rimmed tires is a Lamborghini but Yoan's favorite..."At least on this day.", he said...was the Black BMW-18 with the very strange doors.
The Chicago White Sox Minor League system is overloaded with super Cuban prospects like Yoan Moncada and now Luis Robert, but the top White Sox slugger already is Jose Abreu. Jose defected from Cuba in August of 2013 and in October of 2013 he signed with the White Sox for a guaranteed $67 million. In 2014 with the Chicago White Sox Jose was the unanimous choice as the American League's Rookie-of-the-Year. When that first contract runs out, Jose's new free agent contract will be worth a lot more than a measly $67 million because the other 29 teams can then also bid for his now proven MLB talent.
This photo shows Jose Abreu when he played for the Cuban National Team, a team that once-upon-a-time dominated international competitions such as the Pan-Am Games, the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic. But the United States Major Leagues have now siphoned off even Cuba's best teenage baseball talent and the Cuban Major League stars are not allowed to play for Cuba's national teams although Major League players from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc., can play for those national teams. Also Cuba is in the totally unique position of being the only nation in the world in which its superstar baseball and ballet talent, along with other skilled Cubans including its plethora of doctors, are lured off the island merely as a means to hurt Revolutionary Cuba, a process that has been largely dictated by elements from the vile Batista dictatorship that was overthrown on January 1, 1959.
Major League Baseball's Cuban Pipeline is greased in the United States by two major factors: {1} Cuba produces more baseball talent per capita than any nation on earth; and {2} since 1959 anything Miami and Washington can do to hurt Revolutionary Cuba is done as a matter of course, with much of it via laws made legal by the U. S. Congress. In regards to baseball, all of the thirty U. S. Major League teams have year-around, state-of-the-art baseball parks and other facilities, staffed with pro instructors and scouts, in the Dominican Republic but nothing like that would be allowed in Cuba because it would displease the counter-revolutionaries factions who, for over half-a-century, have largely dictated America's Cuban policies, the policies that currently have a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. So remember, the Cuban Pipeline sates the appetites of America's Major League baseball teams but also pleases the counter-revolutionaries who have been trying to destroy or at least hurt Cuba since January 1, 1959.
For many years the Chicago White Sox have treasured Cuban baseball players -- like their new crop that includes Luis Robert, Yoan Moncada, Jose Abreu, etc., but also older players like Jose Contreras, Alexei Ramirez, Minnie Minoso, etc. Of all those players, the most beloved in Chicago was Minnie. He was born in Pirico on the edge of Havana in 1925 and his best years as the star outfielder for the White Sox were from 1951 till 1964. White Sox fans nicknamed him "The Cuban Comet" and "Mr. White Sox."
The talented and charismatic Minnie Minoso.
He died of old age in 2015 but almost till the end Minnie Minoso was still throwing out the first ceremonial pitch to start special home games, like season openers, for his beloved Chicago White Sox.
Unlike the newly minted teenage millionaire Luis Robert, the young Cuban woman above doesn't play baseball and thus she is not a multi-millionaire in the United States. But she has talent. Her name is Yanet Perez Moya. She is well-educated, healthy and very happy as one of the many very young and already successful radio and television journalists on the island. The University of Havana and other Cuban universities have excellent journalism classes -- both print and electronic -- and it is totally free with no student-loans to pay back after graduation. While in college Cuba's journalism students get practical experience that includes covering news, writing articles and with live and taped radio and television broadcasts critiqued by professors. Yanet is now a skilled and very popular broadcaster -- in radio and television -- in Camaguey, Cuba. She is not as well known across the island as young superstars like Cristina Escobar and Rosy Amaro Perez, but Yanet too is a fast-rising star as a broadcast journalist.
Meanwhile, as her broadcast career ascends upward, Yanet Perez Moya enjoys her tropical island when she's at work and when she is not working, as above. She is an example of young and skilled talent on the island that is both intent and content with remaining a Cuban and not becoming a foreign pawn.
This photo shows Cuba's superstar anchor Cristina Escobar on a brand-new set on a brand-new television channel for the island. The USA spotlights the Cuban baseball stars and the remnants of the long-ago-ousted Batista dictatorship but Cuba spotlights its own superstars like Cristina Escobar.
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