Book Review: Cuba’s Baseball Defectors

Cuba’s Baseball Defectors: The Inside Story

You don’t have to follow baseball to be riveted by the details of Yasiel Puig’s defection. His extraordinary journey from Cienfuegos, Cuba, to Los Angeles by way of Mexico is complete with smuggling, kidnapping, and narrow escape—the kind of story arc you’d want from an action blockbuster.

Some readers might assume a book about Cuban baseball defectors would take the Hollywood approach, shining a light on Puig and other stars who’ve risked life and limb for political freedom and major league glory. But Peter C. Bjarkman’s new book, “Cuba’s Baseball Defectors: The Inside Story,” offers a more skeptical view of that narrative, as well as a scathing critique of the agents who turn a blind eye to the human trafficking that’s behind many defections. He’s focused less on the star players and their sensational escapes and more on the sum total of those defections, and the impact they have on a community left behind. This is a country that fervently loves its baseball but can barely pay its athletes, so as each player leaves, the infrastructure of the game continues to erode.

The “inside story” promised by the book’s title is essentially one of a special vantage point, of an isolated institution looking outward. Bjarkman, an American, gives the impression that he’s adopted this “alternate baseball universe” as his own, in the process renouncing his former allegiances, not in political terms but simply as a fan who’s grown in love with a certain brand of baseball. Maybe it’s the natural result of someone attending hundreds of Cuban games as the author has, both those on the island and abroad in international competition. It’s clear that after visiting the island more than 50 times since 1997 and reporting extensively on Cuban baseball, he brings expertise to the subject.

In “Cuba’s Baseball Defectors,” Bjarkman’s unique perspective yields mixed results. His accounts of defection are all the more poignant because he portrays the rich legacy that players are leaving behind, one that reaches back to 1864—long, long before Fidel Castro recast the sport as a symbol of revolutionary triumph. On the other hand, in drawing on years of statistics and game summaries, some of Bjarkman’s exhaustive accounts of individual players—both those who have and haven’t defected—can be draining to read. Arguably, many recaps of various tournaments featuring Cuba will be of interest only to the most diehard fans of the national team.

However, there’s really no need to dwell on these concerns, because in light of the recent promising efforts at a U.S.-Cuba détente, we’re at a historic junction now where much may change in the next few years.

Bjarkman’s perspective on this change is an interesting one. Long skeptical of Major League Baseball and its potential impact on the game in Cuba, Bjarkman anticipates a greedy drive to scoop up even more Cuban talent, and for agents to pounce on what he calls “one of the last remaining opportunities for rampant strip-mining.”

But even if that were the proper course—and Bjarkman forcefully argues that this proud nation would never consent to it—it wouldn’t necessarily serve anyone’s bottom line, including Major League Baseball’s. If American interests were to turn Cuba into “yet another MLB plantation,” with no concern for future harvests or the overall health of the farm, their reward would only be a shrinking crop.