Cuban players face big-league change
Contrasts stark for A’s Cespedes, others
OAKLAND — The first time Oakland Athletics rookie Yoenis Cespedes homered on U.S. soil, he stood and admired his 462-foot blast. The next day, Seattle Mariners ace Felix Hernandez drilled him with a pitch.
As if absorbing a new language weren’t hard enough, the Cuban defector also has to learn baseball’s unwritten rules at the major league level.
“In Cuba, when I hit a home run, one that I really hit well, I would stand and watch it and it was no big deal,” Cespedes says in Spanish. “Here, it’s different. You stay there watching it, and the next time up they hit you.”
That’s one of the countless daily lessons Cespedes — pronounced Says-peh-des — is assimilating as part of his indoctrination into life and baseball in the USA.
Another could come today as Cespedes and his fellow Cuban major leaguers might garner unwanted attention as Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen returns from a team-imposed five-game suspension for comments praising Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro.
Cespedes fled Castro’s regime for this opportunity, but he and others know the path to stardom isn’t altogether smooth once they’ve left Cuba behind. It’s a process rife with pitfalls, and his success in adjusting off the field figures to have a significant impact on his performance on it.
Cespedes, who signed a four-year, $36 million contract as a free agent in February, was muchhyped — a promotional video that ends with him roasting a pig went viral this winter — but the track record of Cuban stars has been mixed.
While half-brothers Livan and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez helped pitch their teams to World Series championships, Ariel Prieto and Rolando Arrojo had brief, injury-filled careers.
Jose Contreras, whose $32 million deal with the New York Yankees in 2003 set the Cuban record before Cespedes topped it, was the staff ace of the World Series-winning Chicago White Sox in 2005 but has gone 77-67 with a 4.54 ERA in his career.
Kendrys Morales emerged as an MVP candidate in 2009 before missing more than a season and a half with an ankle injury, and shortstops Alexei Ramirez, Yunel Escobar and Yuniesky Betancourt established themselves as productive everyday players.
Pitcher Alay Soler and first baseman Juan Miranda, on the other hand, have failed to stick in the majors.
The jury is still out on recent arrivals such as Aroldis Chapman, Dayan Viciedo and Jose Iglesias.
Peter Bjarkman, who has written extensively about Cuban baseball, points out that only a handful of the players who left the island to seek fortune in the majors were top stars. Several defectors, he said, were oversold to general managers, the news media and fans.
“When you only have a couple dozen players to look at,” Bjarkman said via e-mail, “and when some of the more recent ones have come to the majors surrounded by so much hype and such made their debut in the last eight years.
In addition, prospects Adeiny Hechavarria and Leonys Martin are among the exiles working their way up in the minors. Outfielder Jorge Soler, regarded by some as having more star potential than Cespedes, is coveted by several teams but remains in the Dominican Republic trying to gain residency and free agency.
Jaime Torres, an agent who has been representing Cuban players since 1993, says the island’s dire economic situation and the spread of information about the opportunities stateside have prompted more players, especially younger ones, to take the leap.
“As opposed to players in the ’90s, they’re not settling for their careers in Cuba and with getting a bicycle or a small house (from the government),” Torres says. “I believe players in Cuba now are more aware of what’s happening in baseball in the United States than they were eight or 10 years ago.”
Once they reach these shores, though, they are bound to grapple with a culture shock that far exceeds the difficulties encountered by fellow Latino players, because of the restrictions Cubans face on the communist island.
“In Cuba, they make it look like this country is full of bad people. It’s all lies to fool us,” says Noel Arguelles, a lefthanded starter in the Kansas City Royals organization who defected from Cuba in 2009. “We don’t know any better because we don’t get exposed to anything about the United States. You can’t get on the Internet or see American shows. It’s like we’re blindfolded.
“So it makes it harder to adjust when we defect, because we don’t know anything about the country we’re coming to.”
Missing home and family
And they usually arrive by themselves, having left their relatives behind. Arguelles and Chapman, the fireballing left-hander who signed a $30.25 million contract with the Cincinnati Reds in January 2010, say they dearly miss their mothers, even though they can talk to them regularly on the phone.
Chapman has yet to meet his soonto-be 3-year-old daughter, who was born right around the time he was defecting. Cespedes, who has not offered details of how he left Cuba, was able to bring his mother, aunt and three cousins with him. However, his 2-year-old son, Yoenis Jr., stayed with his mother, who is not married to Cespedes.
Chapman longs for the sense of community he felt in his hometown of Holguin, where neighbors often mingled on the street or visited each other. He lives in Davie, Fla., 22 miles north of Miami, and doesn’t know his neighbors.
The desire for a semblance of home can leave players — young and inexperienced in dealing with the large sums of money many of them suddenly have — vulnerable to scam artists pretending to be friends or hangers-on.
“The most difficult part has been being by myself here,” Chapman says. “Life here has shown me you can’t trust anybody. Ever since I got here, I’ve had unpleasant things happen to me with people I thought were like my brothers, who I grew up with. You realize you can’t trust anybody.”
He later amends that to say he does trust Venezuelan-born Tomas Vera, the Reds’ assistant trainer who has been a father figure to him.
Torres stresses that the support system around Cuban exiles plays a large role in how quickly they settle in. To that end, the A’s have provided Cespedes with a confidant in Prieto, who broke in with them in 1995.
Now 42, Prieto remembers the loneliness he felt initially in Oakland, until he met a Cuban family that took him in as their own. He and Cespedes plan to find a house to share during the season. Prieto also travels with the team and serves as Cespedes’ interpreter, a valuable function on a team with only three other Latino players.
Those steps should help enhance Cespedes’ comfort level off the field. Once he puts on the uniform, it’s up to the multitooled outfielder to show he’s worthy of the money and the advance billing he has received.
Ramirez, his former teammate on the national squad and a frequent opponent during Cuba’s regular season, says he’s up to the task.
“It’s still four bases and a pitcher,” says shortstop Ramirez, in his fifth season with the White Sox. “Every staff has a pitcher who throws more than 95 mph, so you have to adjust to that. But you can accomplish anything with hard work. I’ve always said that the players who leave Cuba have the ability to play here.” unrealistic expectations, then it is not surprising that there have been disappointments, inconsistencies and some failures.”
Facing superior pitching
Cespedes, 26, is batting .212 with three homers and seven RBI. He has reached base safely in nine of 10 games but also has struck out in all but one game, for an alarming 15 times in 33 at-bats.
Though his stunning displays of power from a 5-10, 210-pound frame make Cespedes’ batting practices must-see events, he’s still developing a notion of what to expect from bigleague pitchers, who frequently get him to chase breaking pitches when he’s behind in the count.
A’s manager Bob Melvin says that’s simply a matter of learning the opponents. “It’s not like he can’t hit a breaking ball,” Melvin says. “I’m guessing there are some guys who throw breaking balls in Cuba.”
What they don’t have in Cuba is the advanced scouting and sophisticated video systems that are staples of the majors, allowing teams to dissect and exploit players’ weaknesses.
They also don’t have the pitching consistency Cespedes now faces. His gaudy statistics last year in Cuba’s 90game season — a .333 average with 33 homers and 99 RBI — were carved out in a league in which batting .300 is commonplace. He might have seen one hard thrower every three days.
“Here, they bring in a guy who throws 95 (mph),” Cespedes says, “and the next one throws 97 and the one after that 98.”
Even more than the higher level of competition, adapting to a new way of life — especially the English language — represents the biggest challenge for Cuban players, who have been arriving in the majors with more frequency than at any other time since Castro came into power in 1959.
Thirty-nine Cuban natives have played in the big leagues since pitcher Rene Arocha became the first defector from the Castro regime to reach the majors in 1993, and 19 of them have