A good-will tour of Cuba next week by Major League Baseball and its players’ union will include a prominent Cuban player who defected in 2013, a rare concession by a Cuban government that typically denounces such individuals as traitors and bars them from its national team.
The player, Jose Abreu, has established himself as one of baseball’s premier sluggers in his two seasons as the first baseman of the Chicago White Sox. He will be joined on the good-will tour by at least two other Cuban major leaguers — shortstop Alexei Ramirez, who left Cuba in 2007 but has said he does not consider himself a defector, and journeyman catcher and first baseman Brayan Pena, who left Cuba as a teenager with his father in 1999.
A fourth Cuban major leaguer, Yasiel Puig, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger who defected in 2012, has also been mentioned as a participant in the tour, but it was unclear if he would join the group. He is under investigation by Major League Baseball after an altercation last month at a Miami nightclub.
Cuba normally prohibits players who defect from re-entering the country before eight years have passed, in part to discourage what has been a steady stream of Cubans who have left in recent years, often by fleeing the island by boat in dangerous journeys or by bolting at international tournaments. It is rare, if not unprecedented, for a Cuban player active in the major leagues to make a high-profile return to the island, and Abreu’s recent defection makes his participation in the tour particularly notable.
Officials for Major League Baseball, working closely with their Cuban counterparts, including Antonio Castro, who is a son of Fidel Castro as well as a top baseball official, said they had secured assurances that the Cuban players would be allowed to be part of the tour, although with certain restrictions. They can visit with family members who live in Cuba, for example, but only at a designated hotel.
The Cuban players also received assurances that they would be allowed to leave the island when the tour was over, two people in baseball said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because details of the trip had not been completed and officially announced.
An email seeking comment from the Cuban Embassy in Washington was not answered.
The tour, set for Dec. 15-18, represents the latest step by baseball officials in the United States to create a working relationship with their Cuban counterparts that could lead to an orderly system for Cuban players seeking to join the major leagues.
The tour will include children’s clinics and a charity event and will be officially led by Joe Torre, who works in the commissioner’s office as the chief baseball officer, and Dave Winfield, a special adviser to the union. They will be joined by the Cuban players and four other major leaguers — Clayton Kershaw, Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz and Jon Jay.
The best-known Cuban player making the trip is Abreu, 28, who was the American League rookie of the year in 2014.
Ramirez, 34, was a mainstay in the White Sox’s lineup the last eight seasons and is now a free agent. Pena, 33, has been a catcher and a first baseman in the major leagues in a career that began in 2005. He is signed with the St. Louis Cardinals for the 2016 season.
The tour is taking place against the backdrop of an effort by the United States and Cuba to normalize relations. Commissioner Rob Manfred, taking a cue from the Obama administration, had baseball’s top lawyer, Dan Halem, meet with Antonio Castro in New York in October.
Other MLB officials traveled to Cuba to examine the main stadium in Havana and determine whether it would be feasible for a major league team to play a spring training game there in 2016 against Cuban players.
Although the officials reported back to Manfred that the field at the stadium would need to be upgraded, the effort to hold a spring training game in Cuba has moved ahead.
At the same time, a veteran minor league executive, Lou Schwechheimer, is leading an effort to put a minor league team in Havana, perhaps as early as 2017.
Schwechheimer has secured the exclusive rights from Minor League Baseball to return professional baseball to Havana. He has assembled a group called the Caribbean Baseball Initiative, which includes two former U.S. ambassadors and is working with Cuban officials.
Despite all this movement, a U.S. trade embargo, in place for more than five decades, continues to block most commercial ties with Cuba and may limit many efforts by American baseball officials to gain a foothold on the island.
Still, the interest is there. In mid-November, with numerous major league teams clamoring to be the one chosen to go to Cuba for the spring training game, Manfred resorted to picking a ball out of a bin to decide. The winner was the Tampa Bay Rays, a selection that carried extra weight because the area around St. Petersburg, Florida, where the Rays play, has a significant Cuban imprint that predates the rise of Fidel Castro in the late 1950s.
However, it is still not certain that the game will occur, with more negotiations still necessary. Beyond that, much give-and-take is still needed between American and Cuban baseball authorities before any significant deal might be reached that would allow Cuban players to move freely between the two countries and play in the major leagues. Cuba would presumably want to be compensated for allowing players to leave.
Although officials from the Obama administration and Major League Baseball have expressed some optimism that an arrangement will eventually come to pass, some experts on Cuba remain skeptical that current Cuban policy will change in the foreseeable future.
But for now, there will be a good-will tour with some notable American baseball names, including at least one from Cuba.
