Paying the Price for Freedom : The Trickle of Defections by Cuban Athletes Might Soon Become a Flood

Since Osmani Estrada left Cuba last October, his mother has died and his father, a war hero in Angola, has denounced him. And nine months later, Estrada’s rare phone calls to his wife in Havana still reduce him to tears.

“Emotionally, it is very difficult for me,” Estrada said. “You always want to be near your family. I need to hear her voice. When I hear her voice, it’s like she’s standing next to me.”

Before Edilberto Oropesa left the island earlier this month, he kissed his pregnant wife goodby, knowing he might never see her again.

Such is the price of defecting.

Yet more and more Cubans seem willing to pay it. Since October, nine baseball players, a fencer, a water polo player and a team doctor have sought political asylum, leaving behind everything but the clothes on their back. And there might be more on the way.

The trend is significant. Although tens of thousands of Cubans seeking a better life in the United States have risked--and often lost--their lives in the seas between their homeland and Key West, Fla., athletes, among the most-pampered in Cuban society, have traditionally been content to stay home.

They were considered heroes of the revolution because of their international victories, and few expenses were spared to keep the government-sponsored sports machine running.

Cuba customarily has fielded powerful volleyball and boxing teams and developed several outstanding athletes in other sports. But it has dominated international baseball. Cuba has won 12 of the 15 world amateur baseball tournaments held since 1969, and lost only once in 73 games between the 1987 Pan American Games and the Barcelona Olympics.

“We were treated special,” says outfielder Alexis Cabreja, who defected with Estrada. “We were taken care of.”

Still, there apparently was--and continues to be--discontent in the ranks. And it’s growing into what could become a pipeline to the major leagues.

Two years ago, pitcher Rene Arocha walked out on the Cuban national team in Miami, the first baseball player to defect since Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959. Other players watched closely to see what price Arocha’s family would have to pay for his actions. When nothing happened, some grew bold.

And Arocha, after one full season in the minor leagues, is in the St. Louis Cardinals’ starting rotation.

“All the ballplayers in Cuba are aware of what Arocha is doing,” said Reinaldo Ordonez, 22, a 5-foot-8 shortstop who defected last week during the World University Games in Buffalo. “He has been our motivation (for defecting).”

Ordonez and Oropesa, a 23-year-old pitcher who 10 days ago scaled a 12-foot fence at the Niagara Falls ballpark while in uniform, are the latest to follow Arocha’s footsteps.

“He climbed over the fence and yelled ‘Asylum! Asylum! Asylum!’ and got into a car,” parking lot attendant Jennifer Pyrczak, 14, said of Oropesa, who was taken away by a relative. “They were flying, they didn’t even look. If I didn’t step back, they would have hit me.”

Two others, first baseman Luis Alvarez Estrada, 25, and left-handed pitcher Osvaldo Fernandez Guerra, 26, defected from the Cuban national B team in June in Curacao, off the northern coast of Venezuela, and are still there.

All the defectors say they want the chance to play professional baseball, forbidden in Cuba since shortly after the revolution.

Said Cabreja: “Our main objective, above all, is to have the liberty that we didn’t have there and to play baseball and see how far we can go.”

But in Cuba, the players had to keep those desires secret. Discussing them with friends could have led to a visit from the neighborhood Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. And talking of defecting with loved ones would have implicated them in the “crime.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time but couldn’t tell anybody so as not to compromise family members,” Oropesa said.

Cuba’s rapidly deteriorating economic conditions have made it easier for athletes to think what was once unthinkable. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba lost billions of dollars in foreign aid and millions more in favorable trade agreements, leaving the country in such desperate straits that even the sports program, traditionally protected from fluctuations in the economy, has had to scramble.

For the Barcelona Olympics, Cuban sports officials trimmed their contingent to only the 175 athletes they believed could challenge for medals. And to participate in the World University Games the last two weeks, the Cubans said they had to raise the money without government help.

“It cost us $140,000 to come here,” said Manuel Morales Quintana, chief of the Cuban delegation in Buffalo. “It took three years to finance this trip. The money came from three sources: from (cash) awards given to athletes, from the sale of Cuban sporting goods and from the money made by Cuban coaches abroad.”

Morales Quintana said morale was high among the 125-member Cuban delegation and that the defections by the baseball players and fencer Geovanni Perez Gonzalez were insignificant.

“The rest of the delegation continues its work,” Morales Quintana said. “Cubans are a naturally happy people. This is nothing that has affected them, and they continue to celebrate their triumphs.”

Nevertheless, many observers believe that the defections will continue. But whereas some of the island’s deep talent pool is finally available to major league teams, the defectors have not been received with great enthusiasm because most are considered squeeze players. That term is commonly used to identify players who, although talented, stood little chance of unseating their counterparts on the national team.

Of the defectors, only Arocha and pitcher Fernandez Guerra, who made the national team in 1990, ever advanced to that level.

“They’re coming off the second team, not the national team,” said Fred Ferreira, director of international operations for the Montreal Expos and a former Latin America scout for the New York Yankees.

“But you never know, there could be a premium player there. You may be the second-best third baseman in Cuba, but you’ll never make the A team because (Omar) Linares is ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you aren’t a good player. You may be good enough to be a college All-American, but no one gets to see you play.”

Linares, 25, is generally regarded as the best all-around amateur player in the world. He is scheduled to play with the Cuban national team in a series against the United States at Millington, Tenn., later this month, which could provide an interesting problem for major league franchises if he or any of his teammates decided to defect.

Since 1977, major league clubs have been operating under the so-called Kuhn directive, named for former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, which prohibits teams from signing Cuban players unless those players are assigned, by major league baseball, to a special lottery or to the amateur draft. But what would happen to a renegade team willing to risk the $250,000 fine for violating that rule?

“Any contract has to be approved,” said Bill Murray, executive director of baseball operations in the commissioner’s office. “If a player signs a contract but it’s not approved, he can’t play. We’ve notified all the clubs (of the rules). We want to give everyone an equal opportunity.”

The Cardinals, for instance, got the rights to Arocha in a lottery. Estrada, Cabreja and pitcher Ivan Alvarez--who defected in Merida, Mexico, last fall--were selected in the June draft. Estrada, an infielder, and Cabreja, both 24, were taken by the Texas Rangers; Alvarez, 23, by the San Francisco Giants.

They are playing Class-A ball, Estrada and Cabreja with Erie, Pa., of the New York-Penn League and Alvarez with San Jose of the California League.

All three players were scouted heavily last winter, and both the national and junior teams from Cuba have begun drawing greater numbers of big-league scouts to their international tournament games.

“We are certainly aware of the talents of some of the players from Cuba,” said Dan O’Brien, director of scouting for the Houston Astros.

Some scouts and teams, though, are careful not to tip their hands about the Cubans. Their comments generally are guarded and noncommittal, and in some cases they profess lack of interest. But what they say publicly and what they believe privately are different, says Los Angeles agent Gus Dominguez.

“The scouts are always blowing smoke,” said Dominguez, who represents Arocha and eight of the nine recent baseball defectors. “I’d say the talent level in Cuba is probably four guys deep at every position. . . . With this team (in Buffalo), I knew the position players were good, but the pitchers really impressed me. And they’re all young guys.”

Baseball historian Peter C. Bjarkman says some of the major league teams might be simply fearful of the unknown.

“We don’t know how (Cubans) are going to do . . . we don’t know how deep the talent level is,” said Bjarkman, author of “Baseball With a Latin Beat,” a history of Latin American baseball due out in the spring. “There has been so much romance surrounding the Cuban players. . . . There may be just a limited number of people who have had the talent and coaching to have an immediate impact (in the major leagues).”

As Bjarkman noted, Cuba, once the main exporter of Latin talent to the major leagues, has been replaced by the Dominican Republic in the decades since Castro closed his country to the major leagues.

And even if the political climate in Cuba changed and players were able to sign professional contracts, they would have to compete with their Caribbean neighbors as well as players from the United States for spots on major league rosters. Twenty-three clubs and one Japanese team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, operate player-development academies in or near Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and Ralph Avila of the Dodgers doesn’t anticipate major changes.

“It wouldn’t affect at all the development of the Dominican players,” said the Cuban-born Avila, who has been in charge of the Dodger academy at Campo Las Palmas since 1971. “The mechanism that we have been able to set up to produce ballplayers will continue to work, even if the doors open in Cuba.”

Until then, however, Cuban players will have to wait and hope. Or continue to defect, looking for the opportunity to make money playing the game they love so they can help their families back home by sending cash, clothes and other desperately needed supplies. But always with the idea of being reunited someday.

“I want to help them from here,” Oropesa said. “I can’t help them from there.”

Added Estrada: “We are fighting to make it here and to bring (the relatives) over.”