Without Castro, could Cuban stars move to majors?

As Cubans celebrate the end of Fidel Castro's reign in Cuba, there have to be a few baseball prospects who are anxious to see what happens next.

Castro, himself a baseball player decades ago, helped develop a program that's won three Olympic gold medals in the four Olympics it's been played. But unlike Dominican or Puerto Rican players, Cubans rarely play in the majors because they must defect to play in the United States. And if they defect, they might never get to go home again.

There are a few in the majors, most notably Mets pitcher Orlando Hernandez, his half-brother, Livan Hernandez (now of the Minnesota Twins) and Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras.

"I want to be in my country, like everybody else," Livan Hernandez told the Associated Press on Feb. 19. "The Dominican guys, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, everybody comes back and spend time with their family. It's different for us. There's a lot of people that don't know. It's something inside that can bother you. And you can't do nothing."

There's no doubt that Major League Baseball is making the plans for allowing Cuban players in baseball. The New York Times reported as such last year.

“Everybody on our side wonders how much talent is really there,” Lou Melendez, baseball’s vice president for international baseball operations and administration, told the Times in their April 2007 story. “I don’t think it is as strong as the Dominican Republic, but nobody knows. There is a talent pool there, but we just don’t know how deep it is.”