NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has eliminated its requirement that Cuban players obtain a license from the U.S. government before they are eligible to sign with big league teams.
The decision could speed the negotiating process for Yoan Moncada, a well-regarded 19-year-old infielder who left Cuba last year with permission from Cuba’s government.
MLB Executive Vice President Dan Halem sent a memorandum to teams Tuesday, saying the new policy was warranted following changes made last month by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to Cuban Assets Control Regulations. That followed President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that the United States and Cuba were re-establishing relations.
A Cuban player previously had to obtain an unblocking license from OFAC before he could sign a contract. Halem told clubs that under the new rules “all Cuban national prospects must provide a sworn statement.”
When you say that you knew this would happen did you mean that you knew that the federal government would force Cuban players to become stateless persons and swear that they were not and are not now communists?
That dude’s 19? Really?
I wish I had the Koch brothers’ or the Waltons’, or Sheldon Adelson’s money.
I’d buy the struggling A’s, move the club to Berkeley, staff it mainly with Cubans, supplemented by a few Venezuelans, Ukrainians, and Viets (but not any North Koreans, regardless of anything that Sarah Palin says), name it The Communists (with an alternate nickname of Los Barbudos), pay the players 100% above league average (but stipulate that they pay a 33.33% tax to the Cuban government), ban all in-stadium advertising, slash beer prices by 60%, play Cuban music between innings, give MSNBC the local broadcast rights, have Fidel throw out the first ball, name Jose Canseco V.P. in charge of medications, declare the Miami Marlins as the team’s official rivals, and watch The Communists finish in the postseason every year.
Viva la revolucion!
That’s a good beginning, Izquierdo.
But you might think about trading the Fascist Ukrainians for the Communist North Koreans.