by Amaury Pi Gonzsalez

OAKLAND–At last count officially there were up to 20 teams with Rusney Castillo who was sent to the minors and Yasmany Tomas from the Arizona Diamondbacks to join the ranks of Cubans in the Major Leagues. At the beginning of this season there were 20 players born in Cuba among the 30 Major League Baseball teams according to the Associated Press report.

The Dominican players lead the foreign players with 83 and Venezuela with 65 and Cuba is up there. My point is even without relations between the U.S. and Cuba for some reason which I don’t understand it’s very tough to escape Cuba Kendrys Morales who plays for Kansas City and I had a chance to speak with him in Anaheim with the red hot Royals (7-0).

It took Morales nine times to escape Cuba because there was no relations like it is now, nine times and he finally made it on the tenth try. It’s not easy but recently a lot of Cuba players have been leaving. There is former relations there, Cuba was a pioneer and this is documented in history the first player for Latin America ever to play baseball organized baseball was a man called Steve Ballan who played in the U.S. from 1868-70 with the Detroit Haymakers of the American Association.

The AA became the National League in 1876 as we know it today, so Cuban players have always been pioneers. Because of the last 50 years with no relations with Cuba and the U.S. and now the relations have come back this year and of course people will be able to travel in and out of the island freely and I hope so.

Amnesty International is a big human rights non partisan organization that just reports what they see and Cuba is still one of the biggest human rights violators. In other words you can not demonstrate in Cuba, you can not say anything in the streets in Cuba about Castro they’ll put you in jail. There is no freedom in Cuba, so people have to be careful. There’s a lot of stuff happening between Cuba and the U.S in trying to patch up things from over the decades.

It’s just not like going to open two Hilton Hotels and saying were going to open two Hiltons in Havana, you have to get things settled with the U.S. Embassy, then relations, then political maneuvers that Cuba has to promise to the U.S. that human rights will not be violated. As of now a lot of Cuban players are leaving the Island of Cuba.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for the Angels and the Spanish radio voice for the A’s and is a member of the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to his podcast below