Throughout its history, Major League Baseball has featured hundreds of players from Cuba and has served as a welcome defection destination for those fleeing the oppressive communist regime for over half a century. I am not going to pretend to be an expert on geopolitics, but I am an expert in hypocrisy.
The league that moved its All-Star Game out of Atlanta due to a voting rights bill is stunningly silent on the current political crisis in Cuba. There are currently over 100 players in the major leagues who are from Cuba. Cuban defectors Aroldis Chapman and Adolis Garcia wrote “SOS Cuba” on their caps during the All-Star Game. Hopefully that raised enough eyebrows for people to make a simple Google search about the crisis in Cuba, because Chapman and Garcia’s employer has been completely silent about the issue.
The unfortunate truth for MLB and its establishment handlers is that the situation in Cuba is inconvenient. The case used to be that politics was downstream from culture, but now it appears to be the other way around. Organizations and companies picking and choosing which cause du juor they are allowed to throw their mighty weight behind. As MLB players’ homeland burns, their employer sits silent after aggressively engaging in political activism for the last year. Is a genuinely real, humanitarian crisis and revolution not enough for them?
Now, outside of an election cycle and the good guys back in their rightful place of power, we are back to normal. Everything is great. Nothing to worry about. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Cuba? What’s that? The can of worms was officially opened and now they’re scrambling to put it all back in
Why are your Cuban players not being given the same unrelenting support as your other minority players, fans and staff were given the last 14 months?
From what we’ve been told by the corporate media, the crisis in Cuba is all about lack of vaccines and Covid resources. Not the fact that people in Cuba are waving American flags in the streets, shouting “Freedom” and “Liberty” as they yet again ask for liberation. Not the fact that the Cuban peso is now virtually worthless and anybody without American dollars is shit out of luck and will likely starve in the street. A symptom all-too-familiar of communism that people in educated circles seem to often forget about. This is a real-life, flesh and blood, humanitarian disaster that a league who went headfirst into racial inclusion, equity and justice rhetoric should dream about. An in-your-face threat to justice.
I guess silence is better than MLB pulling a LeBron James and telling genuinely caring and concerned individuals to “get educated” on Hong Kong while the CCP jails and disappears political opponents. Unless MLB has entered into some sort of aggressive growth marketing plan in Cuba like they have in China.
There was a time in this country when the establishment would drag this story out into the open and maul it to bits as an opportunity to showcase the superiority of American capitalism to the disastrous humanitarian consequences of totalitarian communism and socialism. How the times have changed.
Now, we hear silence from MLB. There are be no black squares posted to Instagram. No Cuban national anthem played before the Star Spangled Banner. No profile picture changed to the Cuban flag. Nothing.
Support all of your players right to truth, justice and the American way. Don’t just pick and choose which crises will get you the most retweets are convenient to you. You are an activist organization now. Act like it. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Isn’t that what we’ve been told?
Anyway, here’s Vin Scully to take us out…