MIAMI (REUTERS)–Star Cuban pitcher Jose Ariel Contreras has long been a New York Yankees fan, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be signing a multimillion-dollar contract with them or any other Major League Baseball team just yet.
There are plenty of bureaucratic hurdles to be overcome before Contreras, who jumped ship from the Cuban team in Mexico last week and is now in Miami, can firm up a new career in the United States, his agent and lawyer Jaime Torres said Thursday.
“It’s premature to talk about offers … there are obstacles,” said Torres, who met up with Contreras and Cuban national team trainer Miguel Valdes when they left an event in northern Mexico.
At a news conference with Contreras and Valdes, Torres declined to give details. But he did say an obvious problem was that Contreras would not be a free agent eligible to negotiate with a Major League team unless he can acquire residency in yet a third country.
Speculation is swirling on which team might snap up Contreras, the latest and among the most distinguished in a line of ball players who have defected from the communist-ruled island to seek fame and fortune in the United States.
“I have been receiving a lot of phone calls–a lot more than I expected,” Torres said, insisting there were no firm plans yet. But he did let the name of a team slip out, the Milwaukee Brewers, who have just completed a franchise-worst 56-106 season.
Torres said if he suddenly got a call from baseball commissioner Bud Selig saying Contreras could be a free agent, “I would be very happy. I will call the Brewers. I’ll call [general manager Doug] Melvin tomorrow morning and say ‘let’s talk to Milwaukee tomorrow.'”
Contreras, 6 feet 3 inches tall and soft-spoken, had the bedazzled air of one whose life has just taken a 180-degree turn.
Asked what his favorite U.S. team is, he said he had always admired the Yankees, but he also declined to speculate on who he might end up playing for.
Peppered with questions on why he left Cuba and why he didn’t jump sooner, Contreras said simply that he had left because he was interested in playing in the United States.
If he had not been tempted before to follow the path of previous defectors such as Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, who left in 1997 and now pitches for the Yankees, it was because Contreras was worried about leaving his family. He hadn’t planned out his departure, but the chance came up in Mexico.
Contreras has a wife and two daughters, 12 and two years of age, and Torres said one priority would be to try to bring them to the United States, although this would not be “quick or easy.”
Contreras steered well away from criticizing the Cuban system, saying, “I left my country because I am better here … I left to play in the Major Leagues.”
He is the “No. 1 pitcher in Cuba,” Valdes said. “We expect a lot for him. He has many possibilities.”
The Cuban Baseball Federation last week called the men traitors and blamed Valdes, a veteran of three decades of coaching national teams, for encouraging Contreras to defect.
Many baseball stars have defected to the United States from Cuba, which prides itself on its all-amateur sports.
The best players are lionized by a baseball-mad public and enjoy privileges such as a car and a good house, but are still paid meagerly by Major League baseball standards. Contreras was earning 600 pesos, or about $23, per month before he left.
