This is my Aroldis Chapman post

The thing that got me was the snow. He'd never seen snow before. I know there are people in California and other parts of the USA who have never seen snow in their lives, but this was different. I was looking for a justification for the significance of the tall man at the table, and I found it all in the comment about snow.

I thought of Havana - hot, sultry Havana, with its perpetual summer, warm, tropical breezes, palm trees, and...poverty and oppression. I thought of John F. Kennedy, of Che Guevara, of Fidel Castro, of Nikita Khrushchev. I thought of Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis and all of those Americans and Cubans who wondered if they'd wake up to see the sun rise the next morning or if they'd die not knowing that the politicians had sold their innocent souls for power and greed. Everything I know about the homeland of Aroldis Chapman revolves around these things.

That very tall, very young man sitting in front of cameras in a room full of people whose language he doesn't speak appeared nervous and shy even when he broke into his big, dream-fulfilled smile. All the talk about the man's character is b.s. That table stood two transatlantic flights and a courageous decision from where the dream began, and just sitting at that table showed his character.

I hope someday soon the embargo is lifted (and the Marlins move to Havana so we can go on awesome baseball vacations!) and relations are normalized so Cubans can start to lead lives that aren't mired in missed opportunities. Until then, young men like Aroldis Chapman will continue to have to make decisions us Americans can't even imagine - leave behind our family and friends to fulfill our dreams and destinies or stay and forever wonder what might have been.

I also hope we'll stop thinking of this man as the Cuban defector and start thinking of him as an ace in a rotation of aces, and maybe, if the baseball gods have finally forgiven us, a (whispers) future Hall of Famer? (I'll settle for a World Series game winner!)

Huh. From the Did You Know Files.

Chances are if you are reading this soon after the publishing time, I am on a flight to Dayton, as long as the Snowpocalypse backups don't affect my flight from National Airport. I do look forward to eating Skyline and Cassano's sometime in the coming days!

A few days ago Red Reporter gave a final rundown of the Best 100 Reds series. An interesting side note was some of the fun names the Reds have had in the past. I like to look at turn of the century rosters to see all of the unusual names and the great nicknames they had back then. As I was pouring over a few rosters from the early twentieth century, I came across some interesting names, not for their unusual sound, but because of their unusual ethnicity, at least for that time - Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida.

Turns out, Marsáns and Almeida, who both debuted on July 4, 1911 for the Reds, are recognized by Major League Baseball as the first Cuban MLB baseball players. Both of them spent time in the Negro Leagues. Though they were light skinned Cubans, the Reds had to refute rumors that they had "negro blood."

Almeida spent only three years in MLB, all with the Reds, mostly as a bench player. Marsáns, on the other hand, was a good player who finished 18th and 24th in MVP voting in 1912 and 1913 respectively. However, a falling out with the manager of the Reds led to his quitting the team and going to play for the St. Louis Terriers of the Federal League in 1914. It was his last good season. Legal battles with the Reds plagued him for the next few years, forcing him at one point to return to Cuba. He went to the Browns the next year and to the Yankees for two seasons after that, but he was never the player he was for those two brilliant seasons for the Reds.

The Reds discovered the pair on a trip to Cuba in 1908 to play exhibition games against the Cuban teams.

You can read the great bio of Marsáns here at the Baseball Biography Project. Interesting stuff.

Of all the firsts the Reds have had, this is one I didn't know about.

There's no more appropriate team for Yulieski Gourriel than the Reds

Stupid politics, depriving the baseball world of so many great players and Hall of Famers. Remember Omar Linares? Never set foot on a Major League Baseball field, but he was one of the greatest third basemen of all time. I loved watching the Olympics to see him play. The New York Times has an article about Cuba being eliminated from the World Baseball Classic that reminisces about how teams used to drool over him.

...one of the juiciest rumors of the late 1980s was that the Toronto Blue Jays and their ingenious general manager, Pat Gillick, were plotting to sign Linares and have him play only home games in Canada.

But stupid politics. Stupid, archaic, lobby-driven notions of danger, stupid ideology. Cuba ceased being any kind of threat to the United States when the Soviet Union fell into the abyss of fallen empires, yet we still have a stupid embargo which has done nothing to change the situation - it has only impoverished a nation of people. And now, after all of the years of dictatorship and poverty, when Cuba seems so close to joining the twenty-first century in the global economy, one can only wonder when the Castros die, will the beautiful island country that breeds baseball players go the way of Haiti, the most dangerous country on Planet Earth? Will the deaths create a power vacuum that will turn the island into a warzone? Will a potential Hall of Famer choose a gun over a bat?

I love international tournaments because we get the opportunity to see the Cubans play ball. It's the only chance we get. I was hoping that the USA would play them in the title game, but Cuba is out and I'm not sure the USA, with its disrespectful attitude towards the WBC, will win another game. (I know that since both teams advanced, the USA-Venezuela game didn't matter much, but Davey Johnson didn't even try. He left Guthrie in even as he was getting pummeled to "get his work in." This is the second time it's happened - the first was with Peavy. And speaking of Venezuela, MLB Network announcers need to shut up about how Magglio Ordonez is a friend of Hugo Chavez. Chavez is not the Hitler Fox News makes him out to be. Stupid politics. Stupid tangents.)

The amazing thing about Cuba's elimination is the fact that since Castro took over, Cuba has never not been in the title game of an international competition. Never in 50 tournaments. Until now. They had won 43 of the 50 tournaments! That's dominance.

Hopefully this administration will finally normalize relations with Cuba and pave the way for Yulieski Gourriel (pictured above) to sign with the Cincinnati Reds (he can play short, right?). He's only 25 years old, so if we get him next year, there's still a lot of life left in those baseball legs! And I'd like to see the Miami franchise moved to Cuba, where people actually go to baseball games - oh, that would be some baseball vacation! You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday, they will join us, and the baseball world will be as one. Oh, yeah, and the greater world, too.
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