HAVANA • The young infielder who could be the next best talent to emerge from Cuba caught sight of one of the best pitchers on the planet and tried to position himself for a meeting.
A narrow, subterranean passageway behind home plate and carved under the seats at Estadio Latinoamericano created an impromptu and confined mix zone for the major-league players visiting Havana’s largest ballpark and the stars of Cuban teams, both past and, in Lourdes Gourriel Jr.’s case, present. A security official was trying to help Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw slip through to the dugout when former Cardinals center fielder Jon Jay pointed to Gourriel as someone he had to meet.
“He’s one of the best young players,” Jay said.
“What position?” Kershaw said, smiling and offering a hand to shake.
“Shortstop,” came the answer.
“Wow,” the lefty said, sizing Gourriel up, “tall.”
The 6-foot-2 and lean Gourriel is, at 22, the youngest of three brothers in a royal family of Cuban baseball. His father, Lourdes Gourriel Sr., stood nearby him and also shined as a player and manager. His two older brothers have been fixtures on the Industriales, the Havana team that calls Estadio Latinoamericano home. He has an uncle, a great-uncle, and a cousin who are big-name players, and Baseball America has likened them to the Alomars or Boones.
Moments after meeting Kershaw and catching up with Brayan Pena, Gourriel acknowledged that the presence of Major League Baseball in Cuba represents an opportunity for him that his father and uncles who played before him didn’t have.
“I never thought something like this would happen so soon,” Gourriel said. “It’s a really big deal here. A lot of things have to happen but I hope to someday be a part of something like this — coming back to Cuba. It’s one of my dreams.”
As Major League Baseball’s goodwill visit to Cuba continued Wednesday, the eight active players on the trip took the field for a clinic with around 180 youths selected from teams in the Havana area. All of the players were paired with a former Cuban player, and all around the blue-painted ballpark — bold blue being the color of the mighty Industriales — generations overlapped and blended, each revealing their role in Cuba’s evolving place in baseball.
There was the generation that stayed, the generation that left, and the generation that may get to come and go.
The youths were learning from major-league players who idolized the Cuban players standing beside them. Pena’s uncle, gifted shortstop Rodolfo Puente (“He’s like our Ozzie Smith,” Pena said), said he couldn’t fathom leaving his family behind to chase baseball. Pena did, risking much to defect as a teenager. The players he taught Wednesday may not have to.
Theirs could be the generation that goes freely to the majors.
“I think it’s going to take some time,” said Dan Halem, Major League Baseball’s chief labor officer and the highest-ranking member of the commissioner’s office on the trip. “This is a first step, but I just generally tell people that it’s going to be awhile before we really get to a place where people say there has been significant progress on all the issues. … I can tell you from our limited interaction (with Cuban officials) there is a willingness to speak to us and try to work out issues that have been lingering decades. Whether that’s because of a change or shift in U.S. policy or if that’s because of a shift in some Cuban views, I don’t know. But there is certainly a willingness on the part of the Cuban (Baseball) Federation to speak to us about a system in which their players could play in the U.S. legally and come back to Cuba.”
The restrictive relationship between isolated Cuba and the United States has forced Cuban players who wish to play in the majors to take a circuitous and often dangerous route. Each of the four Cuban players who returned to their country with MLB had different avenues to the majors. Shortstop Alexei Ramirez married a woman from the Dominican Republic and does not claim to be a defector. Pena left during an international tournament. Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu do not offer details of their departures, though each left by boat.
It’s the trafficking of players from Cuba to places like Haiti and Mexico — where they can land residency, become eligible for offers from major-league clubs, and avoid the draft — that has Major League Baseball most concerned. Players like Gourriel should have safer options if they want to play in the majors, an official said without using a specific name.
But the governments have to move before baseball can.
“We have to take it one step at a time,” Halem said.
Before walking out to Estadio Latinoamericano’s field for what turned into a two-hour clinic, players spent time in a room covered with a mural that featured great Cuban players. Some others were standing in the room. Home run king Orestes Kindelan gave an interview at the same time pitcher and Olympic star Pedro Luis Lazo, or “King Kong,” showed off his red-and-blue Cuba glove with Puig’s name stitched into it.
Pena, wearing his Cardinals jersey for the first time, ran the catcher’s station of the clinic, and he was flanked by two men who helped shape him as a player.
Pena explained to each group of young players that his co-instructor, Pedro Medina Ayon, was a catching hero of his. He played 17 seasons in Cuba, batting .295 with 221 home runs. A few times, Pena pulled another red-shirted coach into the group to introduce Luis Suarez Sanchez. Growing up about 20 minutes from the Industriales’ home — “This is our Yankee Stadium,” Pena said — the switch-hitting catcher wanted to be a wrestler. Baseball was for others. Then Sanchez got ahold of him, molded him, and then only watched from afar as Pena became a major leaguer. This is the first time he’s seen Pena in person in at least 17 years.
Flanked by the generation that gave him baseball, Pena taught the next one.
“If you want to be a big-league player, you need to be smart. School! School! School!” Pena said, in Spanish, to one group of kids. “If you’re not intelligent you’re not going to play baseball in the major leagues.”
Gourriel watched most of the clinic from the third-base dugout.
Pena and Ramirez, both of whom knew the youngest Gourriel brother as a boy, remarked how big he had grown. His numbers have, too. Gourriel hit .321 with a .537 slugging percentage in 43 games for Industriales this year. He began the year as the No. 4 prospect in Cuba according to Baseball America and will move up to No. 3, at least. He’ll rank behind his older brother, the middle brother, Yulieski. The youngest brother is a gifted hitter who could grow into third base and be productive enough to play there. He is expected to go to Japan to play. The greater riches would be in the majors, though that remains a more difficult, if not impossible, path for him, even as the two countries work to normalize relations.
He said that he did not want to miss the big-leaguers’ visit, and most of them greeted him warmly, kidding with the kid in the dugout before posing for a picture.
Gourriel said he watches major-league games when possible. In Cuba, fans purchase what they call “the package,” and it’s a thumb drive with a few games on it, many of them days old. His favorite players are Derek Jeter and Miguel Cabrera. While leaning against a wall in the narrow passage to the field, Gourriel listed them as onto the field walked Cabrera. The Tigers’ first baseman waved to an ovation. He stood less than 30 feet from Gourriel.
It’s no longer hard for Gourriel’s generation to feel that near to the majors.
“I’ve always had that dream since I was a little kid,” Gourriel said. “To get this close to possibly live this dream is really emotional.”
