Nine players from the Cuban national team have reportedly now defected after playing in the World Cup in Mexico.
As The Hill reports:
Cuban officials said nine of 24 baseball players on the national team defected during the U-23 World Cup in Mexico, NPR reported.
In a note published on Cuba’s National Sports Institute (NIS) web portal JIT on Sunday, officials called the players’ action “vile abandonments.”
NIS did not identify the players who stayed in Mexico, according to NPR.
The nine players’ defection is one of the biggest defections of players from a Cuban team playing abroad.
Cuban players are frequently coveted by major league baseball scouts for their impressive abilities.
wpDiscuz
Needed here more vs Cuba
It’s going to be a lot more difficult for the next Cuban baseball team to pull this off. And running the bases with an iron ball chained to your ankle is going to kill their competitiveness.