Tag: Amaury Pi Gonzalez

Boston Red Sox minor league coach Bianca Smith in Jan 4, 2021 tweet from the Red Sox welcoming Smith to the organization as coach making her the first black female in MLB history (photo from @RedSox)

It’s a Brand New World for Women in Sports

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Recently the Boston Red Sox hired Bianca Smith, the first black female coach in professional baseball history. She was assigned as a minor league coach in the Boston organization.

On November of 2020 Kim Ng was hired as the General Manager of the Miami Marlins, first woman GM and first Asian-American. And there are other women ascending into the professional baseball world. There is one category in Sports where woman are also under represented, Sports Agents.

Rachel Luba is an up-coming star in this field. A sports agent named to Forbes under 30 lists in 2021 of the Young Entrepreneur stars. Luba currently represents Trevor Bauer, who won the Cy Young Award in 2020 with the Cincinnati Reds and today is the most famous free-agent pitcher in Major League Baseball.

Last year, Bauer declined the team’s qualifying offer of $18.9 million to stay and pitch in 2021. Rachel Luba is currently negotiating a contract on behalf of her client and pitching star with different clubs.

At 29 years of age Rachel Luba is an Attorney and Baseball Agent in a male dominated field. She did not play baseball, but was a Gymnast in her high school days in Monterey, California, were she was born. Since High School her major career objective was to be a sports agent. She got her Degree in Communications at UCLA, where she also was a gymnast and later in 2016 graduated with a Law Degree from Pepperdine University.

Luba worked for the Major League Players Association and also Beverly Hills Sports Council, working on salary arbitration cases. Now she is close, perhaps, of making big news for her biggest client one of the most coveted baseball players in MLB, Trevor Bauer.

The New York Mets under their President (ex-Oakland A’S President Sandy Alderson) just acquired superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor and right handed pitcher Carlos Carrasco from the Cleveland team. The trade puts the Mets in the ‘thick of things’ against their top rival, the 2020 NL East Champion Atlanta Braves.

There are other teams trying to come back into contention, like the Los Angeles Angels, who need to give the great Mike Trout more support and catapult that club to their first playoffs since 2014.

In the American League there is no team in need of pitching more than the Angels. especially starting pitching and one of the caliber of Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer could be a big fish to catch in the team with the biggest Trout.

Rachel Luba could soon find a suitor for the #1 free agent pitcher in the baseball market and when that happens, she would have landed her biggest high profile athlete. By then the whole world would have learned of that. Good luck to her as an agent in her young career in the business.

Stay well and stay tuned.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead announcer for the Oakland A’s for Spanish radio on 1010 KIQI San Francisco and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish seen here pitching on Oct 2, 2020 in game 2 of the NLWCS in Chicago against the Miami Marlins. Darvish signed this week with the San Diego Padres shoring up their pitching staff (AP News photo)

On That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary podcast:

#1 The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser will leaving the Oakland A’s beat to work the San Francisco Giants beat vacated by Henry Schulman who is retiring and Matt Kawahara will be taking over the A’s beat at the Chronicle.

#2 Amaury, Yu Darvish was surprised that he was dealt from Chicago to San Diego. Although many expected the deal to go down, Darvish really like being in Chicago and really wanted to be part of the Cubs organization.

#3 The Padres general manager AJ Preller moved so fast on the deal to get Darvish from the Cubs that Darvish first learned about on twitter. Darvish upon learning about the deal said “I’m very happy to be joining a team as strong as the Padres”

#4 The Boston Red Sox have hired the first black woman in baseball history to coach in their minor league system Bianca Smith. Smith joins baseball’s first woman coach San Francisco coach Alyssa Nakken and New York Yankees coach Rachel Balkovec as the three female coaches in baseball.

#5 The Miami Marlins signed left hand pitcher Ross Detwiler to a one year deal worth $850,000. Detwiler’s signing is intended to bolster Miami’s bullpen. The Marlins lost most of their team to Covid-19 issues last season and still remained competitive. Detwiler will be an added plus to the Marlins bullpen.

#6 The San Diego Padres are not shy at all they signed Blake Snell from the Tampa Bay Rays. Snell was the pitcher that was throwing a shutout in the World Series before being pulled out of the game by Ray manager Kevin Cash. Snell was 3.24 ERA in 2020 and was 3.o3 in the post season.

Join Amaury Pi Gonzalez for That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary podcast Tue Jan 5, 2021 by Sports Radio Service | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is the subject of That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary of what would have been if Castro played baseball instead of ruling Cuba (USA Today file photo)

Fidel Castro and Baseball – Never a Serious Prospect-

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

There is one thing that unites most men born in Cuba; baseball. For years there have been stories about Fidel Castro playing baseball (like that was something extraordinary) but in Cuba if you are born a male, if by the time you are ready for T-Ball as a kid and you show little interest for baseball, there is a good chance your family might take you to a psychiatrist.

Just like in Brasil, where fútbol/soccer is played religiously, same thing happens in Cuba, but with baseball. As a kid we played for hours after school in Havana, some played baseball for more hours than attended school.

It is part of the DNA of each of us Cubans. However, some write the story of Castro’s refusing a major league team contract, because he wanted to study law. That has as much truth as the promise he made when he took over Cuba, and told the people during a long speech that there will be free elections in the country.

Castro’s biographers and those that saw him “play” agree that as a pitcher he threw hard, but was wild. He never even made the Junior Varsity team of the University of Havana and the story that the New York Giants authorized Alex Pompez (their man in Cuba) to offer a $5,000 bonus to Fidel Castro was ridiculous since no Latin prospect were offered that kind of money in 1950.

In 1950 the average salary of a Major League Baseball player was approximately $13,000. In 1959 before a game between the Havana Sugar Kings and the Rochester Red Wings (AAA affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) in Cuba, Fidel Castro took to the mound with Los Barbudos team (The Bearded Ones) for a two inning exhibition game against a military squad team.

He pitched the two innings, striking out two and grounding to shortstop for an out during his only at bat. And that was his whole “career” as a baseball player. No more, no less. Castro controlled and ruled Cuba, but the narrative about his baseball “career”, is one that he could not control.

Because, its very simple, he wasn’t good enough and was never a serious prospect. Until 1960 Cuba was heavily scouted by major league scouts of many organizations. The most famous scout in Cuba was Joe Cambria, aka “Papa Joe”.

Cambria worked for the Washington Senators and had a yearly-permanent residence on the island. Cambria signed Roberto Estalella, René Monteagudo, Roberto Ortíz and others who went on to play with the Senators at the beginning of their major league careers.

If Fidel Castro showed any serious promise you can be assured Joe Cambria would have signed him, because until that time, Cuba was “número uno”, sending their talent to the US. A year later, in 1961 Castro banned all professional sports in Cuba, including baseball.

Since then, all athletes in Cuba are basically property of the government. They cannot travel freely in or out of the island without the authorization of the government. Many Cubans currently playing in the Major Leagues have escaped the island, or defected while their team was playing an international tournament.

Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016 and according to Forbes, he had a fortune of at least $1 billion which was kept in shells slush funds around the world. For decades he blamed the US for just about everything under the sun, including Capitalism, however he was the biggest Capitalist in Cuba.

In that case he was consistent with politicians, his hypocrisy was palpable, even today we can see how hypocrisy and politicians go hand and hand. Yes, he did loved baseball, but as I stated before, in Cuba to love baseball is a given, is like asking any kid if they like ice-cream.

The fact remains that Fidel Castro never played any type of professional baseball in Cuba or outside the island. Today many Cuban baseball stars make less than $2,000 a year and some of them (Liván Hernández, plus others have told me) have other duties aside from just playing baseball, like driving the bus among their “requirements.”

Baseball is a game of failure, where even the most successful fail more times than none. For Fidel Castro, even as much as he loved the game he decided it was easier for him to become a communist dictator than a good baseball player.

Even Hollywood has never attempted to do a film on the topic of Fidel and his baseball “career”, which would have been a fantasy and that is a Hollywood specialty. My favorite quote on this topic, comes from Hall-of-Famer Monte Irvin, who played for the New York Giants and also for Alacranes del Almendares in the 1948-49 Cuban winter league in Havana, once said that is he had other Cuban leaguers of the late ’40s known that the young student Castro who hung around Havana ballparks had designs of being an autocratic dictator, they would have been well served to make him an umpire.

Happy New 2021. Stay tuned and stay well.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the vice president of the Major League Baseball Hispanic Heritage Hall of Fame Museum and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum sign in Kansas City. The Museum is excited about Negro League stats being part of the Major League Baseball records as announced Wed Dec 16, 2020 by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (AP News photo)

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-Gonzalez

A decision that should have been made many years ago, but obviously is a welcomed decision by Major League Baseball. When The Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame was founded in San Francisco in 1998 the museum instantly classified the Negro Leagues as a Mayor League.

Black players born in Latin America or in the United States played in leagues in the Caribbean. Central and South America for decades, it was not considered an “accomplishment” because the abnormal thing to do is not to allow a player to play because of his skin color.

The United States was the only place in the world that black players could not play in the Major Leagues. Many players had to play in the Negro Leagues and many had at least the talent (if not more than enough) to be in the Major Leagues.

Now, Major League Baseball officially classifying 1920 to 1948 teams of the Negro League as Mayor League. Major League Baseball basically is making a right from something that was a “wrong” for decades and that is to be commended. Nobody can change history, but in cases like this, it is good to correct it and bring it in-line with current society. “All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations, and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement provided by the league. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as major leaguers within the official historical record.”

Note: Jackie Robinson played one season in the Negro Leagues before he was brought into the Major Leagues by Brooklyn Dodger’s Branch Rickey. 1947 Kansas City Monarchs he played in 47 games, 163 at bats, .387 average, 14 doubles, 4 triples, 5 home runs and 13 stolen bases. Although I do not always agree with Commissioner Manfred in his changes to the game, this is one time I give him the highest praise.

Stay tuned and stay well.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish lead radio play by play announcer for Oakland A’s baseball on 1010 KIQI Le Grande San Francisco and does News and Commentary each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com

Reno Aces ballpark the Triple A team in Reno NV announced they will return for the 2021 season in a press release Dec 9th, 2020. The Aces are an affiliate for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Aces are a survivor of many of the minor league teams who are being cut in MLB (sierrasun.com file photo)

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Major League Baseball, after all, came out “very well”, during an abbreviated 60-game season, compared to other sports, playing during a worldwide Pandemic. But (in case some forgot) there was no Minor League Baseball in 2020.

As of 2018 there were 14 ML-affiliated Minor League teams. A total of 160 teams in large, medium and small markets across the country and also in Canada, plus a total 80 teams in three ML-affiliated rookie leagues in Arizona, Florida and the Dominican Republic.

It was on June 30, 2020 that it was announced there was not going to be Minor League Baseball this year. The announcement explained that the season had been shelved because Major League Baseball will not provide players. It was the first time the Minor League season was cancelled since the Minor Leagues were founded in 1901.

However, it was actually in (pre-covid) 2019 that Major League Baseball were planning to eliminate 42 Minor League teams, most in the lowest levels, with more than half of those 42 either at the Rookie League level or Short-Season, Class A. MiLB (Minor League Baseball) also is a revenue-generating business. Most minor league teams are not owned by major league clubs, but they have contracts as affiliates.

Generally teams in organized minor league baseball are generally owned and operated independently but most are directly affiliated with a major league team. Very important Milb, because they have contracts with MLB teams for player development. Because of what happened in 2020, MLB teams lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and therefore had furlough employees, some were told their services terminate at the end of this year.

In the Minor League with zero games played, and even with some payroll protection loans issued early, more jobs were lost. If MLB suffered by playing 60-games in 2020, you can imagine how much the Minor Leagues suffered with no season at all, not one game played. It is very important for baseball to keep their minor league structure for the future.

The game of baseball needs a lot of practice, repetition, seasoning “if you will” of their young talent. All players in the Minor League system have one goal. To be promoted to the Big Leagues, as simple as that. When I was playing as a kid in Cuba with my brother, or just playing catch with my father and on teams in the area.

I always dreamed of playing for a Major League team, I do not recall as a kid I ever dreamed of playing for the Cuban Sugar Kings of the Triple-A, International League, although that was a popular league as well as the Winter Leagues, kids dreams always relate to their Major League teams and stars, heroes.

Baseball has been always like that, and hopefully it will continue. We must remember than the overwhelming majority of the Major League stars began their professional careers and ascent to the Big Show in…yes, the Minor Leagues.

You cannot over emphasize the importance of the Minor Leagues. I can only hope 2021 will be played normally, and that there is a Minor League with younger players ready to come-up to the big team.

We all talk about how terrible 2020 has been, but we also must be positive and realize that we are ending this year with sort of a miracle. The development and approval of covid-19 vaccines, which took around 9 month from beginning to completion.

What Warp Speed Operation accomplished was unprecedented in the history of vaccines, we should be grateful that because of these vaccines (in days made available) millions of lives will be saved in the US and around the world, and this is exactly the news Baseball wanted to hear prior to 2021 Spring Training in Arizona and Florida, which is just two months and a couple of weeks away.

The Minority: These are some well known Major League Players, (some in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown) who never played in the Minor Leagues. They came directly from High School or College to the Big Show: Al Kaline, Sandy Koufax, Bob Feller, Harmon Killebrew, George Sisler, Frankie Frisch, Joe Nuxall, Dick Groat, Dave Winfield, Mike McCormick, Mel Ott, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Herb Washington.

Felíz Hanukkah and Felíz Navidad

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the vice president of the Major League Baseball Hispanic Heritage Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com