Throwing Cuban players a lifeline

Sporting News, The, August 10, 1998 by Kevin Baxter

What he didn't have was a job, a family or any money. Frustrated by Cubas' single-minded pursuit of Cuban ballplayers, his non-Cuban clients began mass defections of their own. So did his wife.

And as for the money, Cubas now had to spring for food and housing for his new players while they applied for residency--and free-agent status (the loophole in baseball's rules)--in the Dominican Republic.

It was an expensive gamble, but it worked. In 1996, Hernandez signed with the Marlins, receiving a $2.5 million signing bonus, then the biggest for a foreign player in baseball history, and the Giants gave Fernandez a three-year, $3.2 million deal. Cubas also turned Nunez and Rodriguez--pitchers who never even had made the Cuban national team--into millionaires when they signed with the Diamondbacks for a combined $3 million.

Cubas has negotiated contracts for more than a dozen defectors since then with two, the Devil Rays' Arrojo and the Yankees' Hernandez, signing for more than $6.5 million. He also has reconciled with his wife and moved into a house he never could have afforded working in construction.

"He's made himself to Cuban baseball basically what Don King is to the fight game," Braves international scouting supervisor Bill Clark told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. "He is the self-appointed commissioner and God and everybody rolled into one."

But just as his parents never let him forget the months they spent living on cat food after their escape from Cuba, Cubas draws strength from the memories of his darkest hours. Even when everyone was abandoning him, he refused to quit "I believed that I could accomplish this," he says. "And there wasn't one soul around me that believed in me. Not my wife. Not my family. Not Rudy. No one.

"The only person that believed in me at that time was Osvaldo Fernandez .... That's why, to me, he's not a player. To me, he's like my little brother."

It's another sweltering day in south Florida, and Joe Cubas is late for an appointment. Neither development is exactly news in Miami. Punctuality is not Cubas' strong suit.

Intrigue, however, is. Which is why Cubas--who fancies himself part sports agent, part secret agent--spends a considerable amount of time looking over his shoulder. Never mind the fact no one's there. That's no reason to stop checking into hotels under assumed names or arranging midnight rendezvous in cemeteries.

"That's so ridiculous and pathetic, it's embarrassing that people believe it," says Beverly Hills-based agent Gus Dominguez, who started the wave of Cuban defections by signing Arocha, then getting Ariel Prieto a $1 million contract in 1995.

Says Iglesias: "My personal opinion is a lot of that is Joe wants to write a book and sell a movie."

Uh, make that written a book and sold a movie. The print version of Cubas' life has passed before the eyes of editors at a half-dozen publishing houses, and the first volley in the bidding war is expected at any moment. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Antonio Banderas already has signed to play Cubas, and Cuba Gooding Jr. would play El Duque in a motion picture that could begin filming before the end of the year.