MIAMI, United States. — The Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB) stated this Monday its intention to recover the agreement with Major League Baseball (MLB), canceled in 2019 by the Donald Trump Administration.
In a press conference offered at the Latin American stadium, Juan Reynaldo Pérez Pardo, the new president of that organization, called on the US authorities to retake the pact to stop the illegal emigration of baseball players and avoid new cases of human trafficking.
“We aspire to have a respectful, ethical and professional treatment, the one that had as its maximum expression the signing of the FCB-MLB Agreement in December 2018 and that disqualified the Government of former president Donald Trump,” said the official, who also heads the National Commission of Cuban baseball.
Pérez Pardo said that the island’s authorities are “willing to resume negotiations” and defend “the respectful relationship with the players born and educated in their land, but who play in the North American and world circuits.”
For Francys Romero, a journalist and writer specializing in baseball, the FCB’s call to retake the agreement with MLB is nothing more than a move to justify the non-call of players who left the Island — the so-called “deserters” — and who do not sympathize with the Cuban regime.
“Pérez Pardo’s statements try to justify the non-call of those players. He knows that many of the players who are in the MLB are not going to repatriate to play with Cuba, and that is one of the conditions that the Cuban Baseball Federation sets,” Romero told CubaNet.
The reporter recalled the case of several Cuban soccer players who play in the MLS and in other leagues in the United States and who have been called up by the island’s national team without the condition of repatriating, something that is still not allowed by those who pull the strings. of baseball in Cuba.
“It is a contradiction within the Cuban sports system and it is something that they themselves have to answer. Why yes with soccer and why not with baseball?”, questioned Romero, author of the book The dream and the reality: Stories of the emigration of Cuban baseball (1960-2018).
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