{"id":10549,"date":"2018-12-20T12:24:41","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T12:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/cuban-baseball-players-allowed-in-mlb-without-defecting\/"},"modified":"2018-12-20T14:22:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T14:22:42","slug":"cuban-baseball-players-allowed-in-mlb-without-defecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/cuban-baseball-players-allowed-in-mlb-without-defecting\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuban Baseball Players Can Now join MLB Teams Legally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Some good news for Sports fans and baseball ones in particular. The MLB (Americas Major League Baseball association) and Cuba&#8217;s Baseball Federation have reached a deal to allow Cuban players to join US teams without the previous rigmarole.<\/p>\n<p>Previously players wanting to sign with MLB teams had to defect &#8211; effectively claiming asylum in the US. This had ramifications for their families back at home and of course, left them at the mercy of people smugglers. Cuba has a long tradition of producing top Baseball players &#8211; the most famous of whom can be seen\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ranker.com\/list\/best-cuban-mlb-players-of-all-time\/ranker-baseball\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now Eligible Cuban players &#8211; those over 25, and who have\u00a0been playing in Cuban league for at least six years, are free to leave and sign with any MLB team.<\/p>\n<p>A similar arrangement exists for players in Asian leagues.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10558\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10558\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10558\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale-300x227.jpg\" alt=\"Yasiel Puig LA Dodgers\" width=\"300\" height=\"227\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale-300x227.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale-768x581.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale-624x472.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale-750x568.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/Yasiel-Puig-By-Keeton-Gale.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-10558\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cuban Born Yasiel Puig Now a top MLB Player with the Dodgers<br \/>Keeton Gale\/Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Cuba&#8217;s Baseball Federation will receive a percentage of any signing bonuses as part of the deal and hopefully, this will be a stepping stone towards the ending of US Embargo\u00a0on Cuba which dates back to 1958. This embargo continues despite continued condemnation\u00a0by the UN General\u00a0Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>Header Filipe Frazao\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some good news for Sports fans and baseball ones in particular. The MLB (Americas Major League Baseball association) and Cuba&#8217;s Baseball Federation have reached a deal to allow Cuban players to join US teams without the previous rigmarole. Previously players wanting to sign with MLB teams had to defect &#8211; effectively claiming asylum in the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[468,200],"class_list":["post-10549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-american-news","category-us-canada-news","tag-baseball","tag-cuba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10563,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549\/revisions\/10563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}