Stray Thoughts

SI.com is reporting that Pablo “Kung-Fu Panda” Sandoval is taking his off-season workout regimen seriously and has already lost ten pounds (he was a reported 5′11″ and 246 lbs during the 2009 season, although he probably weighed less than that at the end of the long season).  If Sandoval really is working hard to get himself in top shape, it’s something for Giants’ fans to be excited about.

As it is, Sandoval can only better if he can stay healthy, and the more he’s willing to work in the off-season to get himself in better shape, the less likely he is to suffer one or more career-threatening injuries.  Obviously, guys who are willing to work hard during the off-season tend to have longer, more successful careers than guys who aren’t.

I also read an article about the ease with which Cuban left-hander Aroldis Chapman defected by simply walking out of his Rotterdam hotel and into a waiting car.  The part of the article that struck me is that Aroldis left behind his pregnant girlfriend back in Cuba.  She’s since had the baby, a girl whom Chapman has never seen.

I can certainly understand why top Cuban players would want to defect to play in the U.S. (the money, the bigger stage, the freedom), but the decision to leave behind your children can’t be an easy one or free from moral questions.  Given the current state of Cuba’s government, it isn’t likely that Chapman will be able to see his daughter any time soon.

I, for one, look forward to the day when Fidel and Raul Castro die of old age and the U.S./Cuba relationship can finally normalize.  The current administration has ratcheted down the tension from the Bush years, and Obama is so popular internationally that even old Fidel has been making kissy-face.  Now, most of the anti-U.S/ imperialism diatribes come out of Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez needs to get his public’s attention away from the high crime rate, the corruption, the economic stagnation in spite of Venezuela’s enormous oil wealth and his own dictatorial impulses.

My hope is that once the Castros kick the bucket, Cuba will become more democratic and more pragmatic in their socialism.  Stick with the socialist policies that have worked for the Cuban people (free education and free health care) but allow opposition political parties and media outlets and open the country up to more for-profit activity that will alleviate the dire poverty experienced by most Cubans.  It seems to work well in most of Europe.

As a baseball fan, I would like to see the Cuban government work out some kind of deal, where if Cuban players want to go to the U.S., they can leave at, say, age 25 and the Cuban government gets a cut of the signing bonus the player receives from a major league team.  Frankly, I can see a system not much different from the posting system in effect for Japanese players like Dice-K, only that the pay out would be to the Cuban government, rather than to the corporations that own each of the Japanese teams.

In a country the size of and as poor as Cuba, the kind of money that the Red Sox forked over to the Seibu Lions just to procure the right to negotiate a contract with Diasuke Matsuzake ($51.1 million) would go a long way.  Major league teams (and plenty of right-wing Americans) wouldn’t like it, but the teams, at least, would pay it in a heart beat to get their grubby little hands on the top Cuban talent.