Alessandria San Roman – “Hey batter, batter, batter. Hey batter, batter, batter. SWING!” For the past few years, investigations have shed new light on American baseball that is more than just the classic baseball chants, bag of peanuts, and the seventh-inning stretch. Since 2004, stemming from over a dozen federal investigations, twenty-five Cuban baseball players have been smuggled into the United States to take their own swing at experiencing the American dream. Within the next month, the public will be exposed to the dark side of American baseball when sports agent Bartolo Hernandez goes on trial in Miami for allegedly smuggling seventeen Cuban players for his own financial benefit.
Investigations have shown that these talented young men flee Cuban poverty and make treacherous deals with smugglers who have ties to drug cartels in order to have a chance at playing American baseball. According to court records, $11.4 million of players’ Major League Baseball (MLB) salaries have been paid to these smugglers. In various situations, some of these players’ families are held prisoner until the players sign extortive contracts that make their smugglers their official sports agents.
This is not the first instance of baseball players discussing the details of their past expeditions to America. In 2014, a lawsuit exposed the story of the Cuban baseball star, Yasiel Puig, and his journey through Mexico where smugglers threatened to shoot kidnapped baseball players if they attempted to escape the Mexican stash houses. The case of Bartolo Hernandez may reveal more details about the involvement and the extent of knowledge the MLB may have had in these smuggling operations.
Throughout these investigations, the MLB claims that the organization is cooperating with government investigators to “protect Cuban players from the dangers posed by human smugglers.” MLB has further emphasized that the organization and its personnel are not the focus of any criminal investigations. Convicted smugglers, however, argue that the MLB had knowledge of the smuggling activities and even fueled the human trafficking business. For such an enormous entity to not know where and how these hidden Cuban stars are entering the United States seems hard to believe for some. According to Gilberto Suarez, Puig’s convicted smuggler, MLB scouts track players at international tournaments. These scouts film players, write reports, and travel to those countries where tournaments are held to value the players. It is at this point that scouts allegedly make contact with smugglers in order to determine whether a player has a desire to leave their country. Players then disappear from Cuban teams and are found in Mexico or the Dominican Republic where the MLB scouts rapidly follow. In countries similar to Mexico, players can obtain forged immigration documents, claim residency in Mexico, and qualify as “international players.” This status allows baseball players to negotiate free agency contracts with MLB teams.
According to an interview with CNN, Suarez insists that scouts know the players are in Mexico or the Dominican Republic illegally. MLB scouts claim that the league is only interested in when the players will be available to sign with a team rather than defection. It is then left in the hands of the MLB’s own company investigators to ensure players have obtained the legal paperwork to play in the United States. Yet, ESPN’s Outside the Lines released an internal MLB communication in 2009 that discussed their knowledge of a black-market business involved in extracting and trading Cuban baseball players. The document urged investigators within the MLB to be mindful of the provided information regarding the use of illegal immigration documents for future cases.
The question is: What will the Hernandez case mean for the MLB? As of now, federal prosecutors have not publicly discussed whether the MLB is under investigation. With increased pressure to ensure baseball continues to be an avidly watched and followed sport, it is no surprise that an organization may turn a blind eye and avoid dangerous dealings with the baseball player black-market. The Hernandez case may reveal that the MLB did not take preventative measures to ensure Cuban players had obtained legal documents. If the MLB falls at the forefront of federal investigations, the MLB has a difficult feat to prove the organization had no actual knowledge that MLB players were the victims of threatening smuggling operations. Nevertheless, this federal crackdown on the baseball player black-market is causing smugglers to strikeout and head right back into the dugout.
