Cuban Baseball

Roger Odisio rodisio at igc.org
Tue Mar 30 13:15:40 PST 1999



>If Fidel and the revolution let one or two players go each year, the Major
Leagues will soon be taken over by Cubans.

Cuba has always produced great players. But they'll have to fight the other Latins and American blacks for domination of baseball. Looks like tennis and golf will be the last bastion of white guys in sport; until, at least, the country club stranglehold of those sports is eased (now being helped along in tennis by the Williams sisters, following in the footsteps of Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson).

BTW, Chata, there is no salary cap in American baseball. The players have one of the strongest unions of any kind in the country, peopled, as it is, by millionaires. Baseball players perform a very specialized form of labor, in much demand, and so they have unusual leverage, even though they have to bargain against billionaires (Disney, Rupert Murdoch, Turner, the Chicao Tribune) both individually (for which they hire millionaire agent consortiums) and as a group for the collective agreement.



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