You've probably never heard of Yenier Bello. He's a Cuban baseball player who defected from Cuba so he could play Major League Baseball. He plays catcher, he's 28 years old, and he's not too bad. He hit .273, with 13 homers, in 2011 (his last season in Cuba), and they play slightly more than half the games that MLB plays.
Bello was cleared this week by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control to sign with an MLB team. Yes, it requires the government's approval, because, well, he's Cuban. Somewhere between 15-20 teams have scouted him, but only now can move on him. Because he's older than 23, and has three or more years of professional baseball overseas, he does not count against international spending caps on teams. If all of this seems like too many hoops to jump through, you've hung with me to the point of this post.
All of this BS that surrounds this foreign player would be unnecessary if A.) The U.S. Government and Cuba would quit having a 55 year plus fight, and B.) MLB would just have an international draft. We saw the Yankees grossly overpay (also known as buying) a Japanese pitcher this week, we saw the White Sox wheel out a truck of cash for a Cuban first baseman earlier in the off-season, and now we see this. None of this is necessary, and in case you didn't notice, this process favors (though not always, as the A's for instance could attest) the big market teams. This is not a good way to run a sport.
