The MLB wants to make it easier for Cuban players to join the league

(Image credit: Al Bello/Getty Images)

published 2 March 2016

Major League Baseball is trying to make it easier for Cuban players to join, The New York Times reports. As it stands now, Cuban prospects must either play for as low as $40 per month in local leagues, or cut ties with their home country to join the MLB.

Though the U.S. and Cuba have been restoring diplomatic ties, an embargo still prohibits U.S. companies and citizens from doing business in the nation. But the league's new proposal would theoretically skirt the embargo by forming a nonprofit-esque entity of Cuban entrepreneurs and MLB officials that would support youth baseball in the country. No money would go to the Cuban government.

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"To play in that type of baseball — in the United States — where the majority of the greatest players in the world want to be, you need to give up something big here, your dignity of being Cuban," Cuban Baseball Federation President Higinio Velez said in December. "We hope that — in the future — Cuban players can go anywhere in the world and play, representing their federation, and that there are not intermediaries that take advantage of them."

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.

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