The Association of Professional Cuban Baseball Players expelled Andy Ibáñez and Yoan López, members of the US Major League Baseball (MLB), and Elian Leyva, who plays in Mexico, after they agreed to be part of Cuba’s preselection for the V World Baseball Classic. “They can’t keep up with us,” he confirmed to Full Swing the pitcher Raisel Iglesias, one of the members of the association.
The decision by Ibáñez and López was described as an act of “double standards”, since months before they had expressed their support for the association, created in March to form a team of Major League Baseball players that could participate in the World Classic. The initiative was promoted by former players René Arocha, Orlando El Duke Hernández, Ariel Prieto and Edilberto Oropeza.
Iglesias, who left the Island in November 2013, let Ibáñez and López know that their decision “would bring consequences” and the baseball players “agreed” and said they would assume them. “Many people will say that we are acting the same as them (the Cuban Baseball Federation), but we cannot have two people playing on the same side.”
In accordance with what was exposed by Iglesias In a “discussion table” in which other members of the association participated, Ibáñez and López, “the manager, Armando Johnson, called them directly.”
“They know that with the baseball players who are on the island they do not count to have a competitive team”
The cause of this rapprochement with Cuban baseball players abroad is the exodus of athletes, Iglesias said. “They know that with the baseball players who are on the island they don’t count for having a competitive team” and he warned that the FCB “will continue to call more people.”
The journalist Francys Romero revealed the change of position of the FCBwhich a week ago had proclaimed through its president, Reynaldo Pérez Pardo, that “they would not summon MLB players because they are residents of the United States.”
The Andy Ibañez thing came to fruition last week, when he was in Havana. The infielder of the rangers shared in their networks images next to the former jumper Javier Sotomayor and the reggaeton player The Taiger.
elian leyva declared to New Herald who considered Cuba’s call as “the opportunity to go to a World Classic. What baseball player wouldn’t want to go to a World Classic? And I’m going to go with Cuba, with my country. It’s a dream come true.” In the list, he detailed, Andy Ibáñez, Yoan López and Josuan Hernández also appear.
The official press de la Isla took advantage of Iglesias’ responses to insult the Association of Professional Cuban Baseball Players, which he described as “a kind of Florida-based baseball political party,” whose members are “shrews” who “intensify the pressures, the harassment and coercion in the public light”, published Hit.
The note added: “They do not denounce the trafficking of baseball players, nor the demolition of the agreement between the FCB and the MLB, but they run out to torture those who freely choose to play for their country and their people.”
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