With An Assist From Smugglers, Cuban Players Make It To U.S.
Cigars aren't the only thing smuggled out of Cuba these days.
Cuban baseball players are also a hot commodity, and sports agents in the U.S. say the process is increasingly dominated by smugglers who track down players willing to defect and find surreptitious ways to deliver them to the United States.
"The whole business got pretty much taken over by smugglers," says former baseball agent Joe Kehoskie.
Kehoskie, who represented Cuban defectors from 1998 until 2008, calls the smuggling an "open secret" among agents, and claims smugglers attempt to "sell" players to agents.
He claims the standard procedure for smugglers is to bring the player out of Cuba and hold him in a safe house in Mexico or the Dominican Republic until an agent pays a "finder's fee" to represent them.
"Nobody is bringing Cuban baseball players off the island just out the goodness of their heart," he says. "It's a bare knuckles, capitalistic endeavor, from the time they're in Cuba to the time they're in a big league stadium in the United States."
Kehoskie said he did never dealt with smugglers, though he acknowledged that smugglers had been in contact with him and offered him players.
A number of Cuban players have been having outstanding seasons, including Yasiel Puig of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Yoenis Cspedes of the Oakland Athletics. Both were recent defectors.
Puig has repeatedly refused to say how he arrived in the United States. The Associated Press reported Monday that a Cuban man imprisoned for human trafficking in Cuba has sued Puig. The man, Miguel Angel Corbacho, says Puig and his mother lied to Cuban authorities and implicated him in a plan to smuggle Puig out of Cuba.
There have also been cases of agents and scouts being arrested and sometimes jailed for allegedly smuggling Cuban ballplayers.
Most notably, former California-based agent Gustavo "Gus" Dominguez was convicted in 2007 of paying to smuggle five Cuban baseball players to the U.S. Dominguez was released in 2011.
Juan Ignacio Herandez Nodar, a former baseball scout, spent 13 years in a Cuba prison for smuggling players until he was released in 2010.
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