Jose Iglesias Wants 'All The Players Of The World To Get Opportunity

Jose Iglesias had to take great risks to play major league baseball.  As an 18-year old Iglesias and his roommate, Noel Arguelles slipped past 11 Cuban security officers in an Edmonton, Canada and with the aid of Arguelles' father, who defected as a national soccer player, crossed the border into the United States in 2008.

A long process of over a year led Iglesias to the Dominican Republic to establish residency which allowed him to sign with the Boston Red Sox in 2009.

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It was risky.  For every player like teammates Raisel Iglesias and Yasiel Puig make it in professional baseball there are dozens who didn't realize their dream.

After Fidel Castro successfully, over threw the Cuban government in 1959, the United States began a policy of refusing its citizens from doing any type of business with Cuban nationals.  That policy cut off a talent pool for the Reds, who signed players like Leo Cardenas, Tony Perez, Chico Ruiz and others to contracts from amateur baseball in Cuba.

Cuban players had to defect, leaving family behind to suffer persecution or worse as Iglesias father Candelario and mother Barbara and his four siblings did.  His father was able to come to the US in 2011.

President Obama lifted the trade restrictions in October of 2016.  Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation struck a deal that would allow teams in the US to sign Cuban players directly without having to defect.  The organization jointly announced a list of 34 names of players who could sign contracts in the US.  No more, dangerous defections, no more bribery, no more trusting "coyotes" to not hold players for ransom.  Just a reliance on the free market system to distribute talent among the 30 franchises in the United States.

But Donald Trump in another short sighted, head-up-his-ass political move provided human traffickers with more business opportunities by cancelling the deal for no other reason than Obama was forward thinking.

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Jose Iglesias is not concerned with the politics of the move.   Iglesias, who was raised in a Communist country demonstrated a greater knowledge of the entrepreneurial spirit that provided the American Dream than the born-on-third-base POTUS, who thinks he hit a triple but never had to so much as fill out a resume.

 "I don;t know much about the details but I just feel like every baseball player in the world should get the opportunity and the chance to compete in Major League baseball," Iglesias said.  "It is every player's dream.  It should be a free world, free market and player development.  I think every player should have that opportunity."

Fans all over the country demand to see the best players in the world when they pay their hard earned money.  They understand the concept that competition is good for business and product quality. That investment and risk, reward is essential to the quality of any product.  The fan base expects the team they follow to invest in the best players.  Cuba is one such source of some of the best players in the world.  For two short years baseball was allowed to tap into that pool of talent without the risks that some modern players had to take, to prove themselves on the world stage.  Which is all they asked a chance to prove themselves among the best.

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"We've been through a lot (those players that had to defect) We've been through a lot to get to this point," Iglesias said. "We don't want others to experience it that way.  It's not just hard.  It can be very, very dangerous.  It is very sad to see it going that way.  Again, I think every player in the world should get the opportunity to compete."