Antonio Castro, vice president of Cuba's International Baseball Federation, said Thursday that the advent of a new relationship with Major League Baseball could have ramifications beyond the current goodwill tour of the island by major league dignitaries and All-Star players.
In an interview with Pedro Gomez of ESPN, Castro, the son of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and one of the faces of organized baseball on the island nation, more than intimated that Cuba expects to host MLB teams, perhaps as early as spring training 2016; and that Cuba would welcome expatriate major leaguers onto a unified Cuban team come the next World Baseball Classic.
How has it come to this, that Jose Abreu , Alexei Ramirez , Brayan Pena or Yasiel Puig - some of whom defected by means that put them at great risk - might play once more in Cuban colors?
In his many references to a new era in relations with the league, Castro mentioned a potential agreement on normalizing the transfer of players from Cuba to the majors by eliminating what he termed human trafficking and other dangers previously faced by players who chose to flee.