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| Cienfuegos-born Yasiel Puig's Dangerous Defection from Cuba |
Editor’s note: On a daily basis from
June 1 thru June 30, 2015 Pillar to Post online magazine is featuring articles,
photos and insights resulting from a recent group tour, an adventure we dubbed:
the April 23 Brigade’s Tour of Cuba 2015.
TWO SCARY TALES
Jose
Abreu (Chicago White Sox) and Yasiel Puig (Los Angeles Dodgers) are elite Major
League baseball players in the U.S. Both
were teammates in the early part of this decade in Cuba with the Cienfuegos
Elefantes. Puig was born in Cienfuegos.
In order to make it to the major leagues both players had to
defect.
The dangerous circumstances involving their defections from
Cuba read more like fiction than real life.
YASIEL PUIG:
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| Yasiel Puig with the Cienfuegos Elefantes |
The path that then 21-year old Yasiel Puig, an outfielder
with the Los Angeles Dodgers, took to defect from Cuba is tale of
desperation. He placed his life in the
hands of criminal elements, who were among the least savory characters in the
Caribbean.
The following excerpt on how Puig defected appeared in the
April 2014 edition of Los Angeles Magazine: “...I don’t know if youi could call
it a kidnapping, because we had gone there voluntarily, but we also weren’t
free to leave,” said Yunior Despaigne, a co-defector and then co-captive
somewhere in Mexico. Despaigne, a boxer
who had known Puig from Cuba’s youth sports academies, recalled the human
traffickers wanted their money for successfully getting the ballplayer to
Cuba. But Puig’s sponsor in Miami wasn’t
coming up with the dough. The boxer
added: If the smugglers didn’t receive their money, they were saying that at any moment
they might give Puig a machetazo—a whack with a machete—to chop off an arm, a
finger, whatever, and he would never play baseball again, not for anyone...”
For the rest of the article go to: http://www.lamag.com/longform/escape-from-cuba-yasiel-puigs-untold-journey-to-the-dodgers/#sthash.ObxkYMWN.dpuf
JOSE ABREU:
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| Puig's Cienfuegos teammate, Jose Abreu, is now with the Chicago White Sox. |
Successful Chicago
White Sox infielder, Jose Abreu’s defection was no less harrowing. Here is the first paragraph of an April, 2015
Chicago Magazine article on how Jose
Abreu came to America. The article was
written by Michael E. Miller
“They left in the middle of the night, entrusting their fate
to a tiny boat, its two motors, and the ink-black sea. For 12 hours, they
pressed on. Through darkness, then dawn, then scorching daylight. Through
15-foot waves. And through the paths of trawlers and other ships that could cut
their own 20-foot vessel in two.
Six of them huddled close atop a roiling ocean under an
angry sky. But it was the hulking man in the middle who held them all together.
Jose Abreu led his family—his fiancée, Yusmary; his parents; his sister and her
husband—in prayers as the boat bucked and kicked beneath them. “It was
dangerous,” he says. “The waves were high, but the Lord was at our side. God
gave us the chance to reach our destination...”
For the rest of the article go to: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2015/Jose-Abreu-Chicago-White-Sox/
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| Home of the Cienfuegos Elefantes Photo: Mike Shess |
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| City of Cienfuegos baseball stadium, April 2015 Photo: Phyllis Shess |
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