Cuban Baseball Defectors 'Walk'

Refugees who have waited months in a Bahamian detention center watched as a group of Cuban baseball stars moved to the head of the line toward freedom.

Left behind the barbed wire sandwiched between two 9-foot-high chain-link fences were more than 100 Cubans without major-league fastballs or home-run swings. Some planned to start a hunger strike to protest the bad conditions and inadequate food supplies.

"We have the same rights as the ballplayers," a voice cried out.

As nine Cuban defectors, including four ballplayers and a coach, were whisked into the Carmichael Road Detention Center near Nassau on Sunday, an international effort to release them was already under way.

Chants of "freedom" greeted the new arrivals and Cuban-American sports agent Joe Cubas, who flew in from Miami to help secure their release much as he did three months ago for pitching star Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.

"We just want what El Duque got. We are all equal, not just the sports stars," said another voice that rose from behind the fences.

The newest arrivals left their hometowns in central Cuba on March 10, then hid for 10 days before setting out to sea on Friday morning. They drifted into a Bahamian fishing boat a few hours later and were turned over to Bahamian authorities at Ragged Island, a tiny fishing outpost about 80 miles north of the Cuban coast.

"I feel really good right now," said 23-year-old first baseman Jorge Luis Toca. "I believe we have found the freedom we didn't have."

Cubas said it was a miracle the group wasn't found before leaving the communist island. Worried relatives had relayed news to Miami that the four players and the coach were missing and had fled the island days before they even left.

The Bahamas has an agreement with the Cuban government to return all refugees who turn up on its shores, although it is not always enforced.

The players who fled with Toca are Angel Lopez, 25; Jorge Diaz, 23; Michael Jova, a 17-year-old player from Cuba's junior Olympic team; and Enrique Chinea, 41, the pitching coach. All five were banned from Cuban baseball in the last year because authorities suspected they were planning to defect.

With journalists at the detention center to get the story of the defectors' dash for freedom, one mother called attention to her son.

Nora Espinosa, 44, was making her weekly visit to see her son, Abdel Alfonso, who has been detained since Bahamian authorities intercepted his raft at sea on Dec. 28. She begged Cubas to do what he could to help.

"He's been here since El Duque was here," she said, referring to the pitching ace who recently signed a $6 million contract with the New York Yankees. "It's his birthday today. He's turning 19 behind those fences."

Espinosa, who works as a tobacco roller in Miami and spends about $200 each week to fly back and forth to Nassau, said sh brings rice, oil, sugar and eggs to her son and milk for the dozen or so young children in the detention center.

"The conditions in there are horrendous ... They don't eat right. They don't have enough clothing. They walk around barefoot. But the only ones that come out are the ballplayers," she said.

By Evan Perez
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