Officials downplay impact of Cuban player defections
By David Carrigg, Edmonton Sun. Monday, August 14, 2000
An international baseball boss has blasted a player agent he blames for luring two Cubans to defect during an Edmonton tournament.
But the Cuban baseball team is blithely ignoring the departures.
"I don't care. It's their problem not mine," said Lourdes Gouriel, assistant coach for Cuba's youth baseball team. "We're going home to have a big holiday, everything is perfect."
Seventeen-year-old Cuban catcher William Plaza and pitcher Yolexandry Reina, 18, both left the team last week, tournament officials confirmed yesterday.
The players are believed to have left Edmonton for Mexico.
Gaston Panaye, tournament director and board member of the International Baseball Federation, is furious at New York-based player agent Joe Kehoskie, who he said helped the two defect.
"The fellow who organized this, I won't call him a crook, but he just wants to make money.
"They're just young kids and someone has influenced them," Panaye said.
"We have to talk about this at our committee meeting next month, something must be done."
At last year's Pan American Games in Winnipeg, 10 Cubans defected.
Bob McMahon, chief operating officer of the 1999 Pan Am Games, said defecting Cuban athletes usually get out of Canada as soon as possible and go to a country where they can become free agents.
"If they get to a place where they are not draftable they can sign as free agents and the market goes up because people can bid on them. They get out of Canada pretty quick," McMahon said, noting amateurs here enter pro-league drafts.
"As an organizer it becomes quite uncomfortable because the Cubans want to ignore it and everyone else wants to know about it."
Ron Hayter, spokesman for Edmonton's 2000 World Junior AAA Baseball Championships, answered his cellphone jokingly yesterday.
"Hello Fidel!," he said.
Cuban president Fidel Castro was angry at PanAm Games organizers after last year's defections.
"We know those two players are not with the team, we knew that a few days ago," Hayter said.
"There was another one suspected, Leslie Anderson, but he returned yesterday. There's not much we can do about it, it's a choice the players made."
Cuba team managers had banned unauthorized contact between players and scouts, agents, media and the public.
Randy Gurlock, Alberta spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said yesterday that no one from any of the teams has approached CIC to remain in Canada.
"The two defecters haven't done anything illegal as far as CIC are concerned. As long as they're leaving Canada it's not our concern," Gurlock said.
Copyright © 2000, Canoe Limited Partnership. All rights reserved. | 