by Michael Duca

OAKLAND–I can not honestly say if ball park security or ball park operations at AT&T Park over the past week when the Dodgers and Giants were there for the three game series when Dodger outfielder Yesiel Puig was getting threats from the Los Zetas Mexican cartel how much ball operations knew about the threat and what did park management do in setting up protection for the fans, players, and employees.

The information that I’ve learned from ESPN is a harrowing account and it is a terrifying account and my first question that I asked when I got even an inkling of this story was how can baseball actually allow him to play? You got a situation here where a person is beholden essentially to Los Zetas cartel in Mexico for 20 percent of what he was going to earn but not on this current $42 million contract.

The understanding is that the cartel doesn’t have a claim on his earnings forever, it’s his bonus money that their after and 20 percent of his bonus money which is a little bit more of an open thing. While its certainly still illegal and it’s extortion and a bunch of other things it isn’t as bad as it’s originally made to sound.

You would understand that somebody would have to pay some kind of fee in the situation, the unfortunate thing is that whole market if you will is clearly human trafficking no matter how you slice it. It’s a violation of international law. We always knew that these players coming out of Cuba were stretching the laws in many, many ways.

You had to violate the laws of Cuba to get out, most people didn’t have too much trouble with that as would often times could rationalize breaking the laws of a country we don’t agree with. He had to break the laws of Mexico in order to get there and he had to bend the laws of the United States by taking advantage of the rather strange American immigration policy that Cubans who do come into the country without documents as long as they show that their Cubans and that they arrive on dry land and don’t come out of the ocean can get political asylum.

It’s all very strange but the bottom line is people involved in Puig’s extracton have died under very questionable circumstnaces. The Dodgers have had a full time security detail around Puig since he’s been called up from double AA Chattanooga and it begs the question, how safe are the fans in those arch ways in right field at Dodger Stadium? How safe are the fans in the areas in right field and how safe is the team?

It certainly has shed some new light on his cavalier attitude and towards the game in some circumstances and maybe it might explain why it appears he’s always concentrating on what he’s doing. I’m not sure how many of us could have survived getting this far. What’s critcial is the safety of the fans, the integrity of the game and the safety of Puig himself.

Oakland A’s update: The Houston Astros opened up a series in Oakland, the Astros who are a last place team begs one to say there are last place teams and I suspect that the Astros will end up in last place or they may win 15-20 more games than they did last year.

The Astros are an imroving team, they have the best farm system in baseball and you can’t take anybody for granted but obviously you don’t take a team that’s young and improving for granted. Particularly early in the season, the Astros don’t know any better, they don’t know they’re not good yet, so you have to play Houston straight.

I have the distinct feeling that A’s General Manager Billy Beane and Manager Bob Melvin know how to get the A’s to play everybody, the A’s are just beating up on people this year and I would be surprised if there is any let down by this team at any point this year.

Michael Duca does commentary on the A’s and Giants each week for Sportstalk radio