Cuban baseball defectors Puig, Abreu returning to homeland in MLB tour

By Daniel Trotta
HAVANA, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Cuban baseball defectors
including star players Jose Abreu and Yasiel Puig will join a
Major League Baseball goodwill tour arriving in Havana on
Tuesday in an unprecedented act of baseball diplomacy.
Cuba does not typically welcome back defectors so soon,
especially for high-profile events, and they remain banned from
the Cuban national team for international events such as the
World Baseball Classic.
But with U.S.-Cuban relations improving and MLB involved in
preliminary discussions with Cuban baseball officials, the
government gave permission for Puig and Abreu to return to their
homeland for the first time since they took illegal boat rides
to defect from the Communist-run island in 2012 and 2013.
Puig and Abreu signed multimillion-dollar contracts with the
Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox, respectively, and
played against each other in the 2014 All-Star Game.
They will be joined by Alexei Ramirez, a free agent who left
Cuba legally and also played in the 2014 All-Star game as a
member of the White Sox, and Brayan Pena, an 11-year veteran who
recently signed with the St. Louis Cardinals. Pena defected from
a Cuban junior team in Venezuela when he was a teenager.
"We gave the names to the Cuban authorities and they cleared
it. They agreed to let them come back, so we're happy about
that," said Dan Halem, MLB's chief legal officer, who will be on
the tour that runs from Tuesday to Friday.
While Puig is better known to the casual U.S. baseball fan,
Abreu is more revered among Cubans, who consider him one of
their greatest players ever.
The tour, which will be MLB's first event in Cuba since a
1999 exhibition game involving the Baltimore Orioles, will
include youth baseball clinics and a charity event.
Although MLB and Cuban baseball officials have begun
preliminary talks about normalizing their relations, no meetings
or high-level discussions are planned for the goodwill tour,
Halem said.
In July, the U.S. and Cuban governments restored diplomatic
relations after a 54-year break, but commercial relations
between Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation
are still largely blocked by the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba.
Cuba would like to reach an agreement with MLB to prevent
the poaching of its players without compensation.
In the absence of a formal transfer system, Cuban players
wishing to reach the major leagues must abandon the island
illegally. More than 100 players have left in the past year.