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Since the 1995 legislation allowing Cuban nationals to seek asylum and eventual citizenship if they reached American shores, nearly 100 professional baseball players from the island nation have successfully defected to the United States, taking advantage of the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy in an attempt to pursue a potential career in Major League Baseball. Late last week, the Obama administration ended the policy. The policy allowed migrants fleeing Cuba without a visa to get automatic entry in the United States. In the policy change, the White House said it was an important step toward continuing to "normalize" relations with Cuba, a process that began with the announcement in 2014 that diplomatic relations were to be restored. Cuba treated defectors as disloyal and often holds players' families on the island to avoid reunions, a practice noted in a 1999 New York Times story detailing the trials and tribulations of the first wave of exiles. Though advanced scouting techniques and the internationalization of baseball via the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic have created recent opportunities for many to arrange their defection, exiting Cuba for the United States has almost always been a risky proposition for athletes. After Livan Hernandez's defection in 1995, for instance, his half-brother Orlando was kicked off the Cuban national baseball team, detained by state police and banned from the sport altogether. Seeking to take advantage of “wet foot, dry foot,” Orlando Hernandez boarded a small boat off the Cuban coast en route to Florida. He was intercepted by American authorities, sent to the Bahamas and eventually entered the country from Costa Rica after a protracted legal process. Others, like Yasiel Puig, avoided direct attempts to reach the United States altogether, as MLB's rules dictate the entry of U.S. residents to the league via their amateur draft, a hindrance that often costs highly touted players tens of millions of dollars on their first contract. After many failed attempts, Puig was smuggled to Mexico in 2012 by men with drug cartel links who later held him hostage for weeks, in an ordeal later chronicled by ESPN The Magazine. For many the risk has been worth the eventual reward. Aroldis Chapman and Jose Abreu have also made the protracted jump from Cuban stars to world stars. Chapman briefly lived in Europe after defecting in the Netherlands during a tournament, while Abreu fled to Hispaniola, the island that houses both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, before eventually signing with MLB. If both players' current contract deals are considered, they stand to make over $150 million combined. The desire and drive of many Cuban baseball players was to succeed, but it was hardly ever a smooth process. Some were not able to take advantage of a third nation in order to achieve the lucrative contracts. When Jose Fernandez defected in 2007, he and his family reached Mexico before eventually reaching Florida. A then 15-year-old Fernandez attended high school in Tampa and blew away hitters at a clip that prompted the Cincinnati Reds to offer an international free-agent contract. Fernandez was deemed ineligible to keep competing at the high school but won an appeal to play in his senior year, the ruling landing him in the MLB amateur draft months later where he was selected by the Miami Marlins, five years after arriving in the United States. He later became a hometown hero and an All-Star, his career cut short by a tragic boating accident that took his life in September. In recent years, mega contracts have been the norm for highly touted Cubans, with teams plunking down bigger figures in a race to acquire top talent. In November 2014, the Arizona Diamondbacks handed slugger Yasmany Tomás $68.5 million two weeks after he defected. Just three months prior, the Boston Red Sox broke the international free agent record by signing Rusney Castillo to a $72.5 million deal. During this past offseason, Yoenis Cespedes got a $110 million deal from the New York Mets while Chapman broke the record for the most money handed to a relief pitcher, notching $86 million in the process. The end to “wet foot, dry foot” will likely change the ways some Cuban ballplayers arrive to the United States. But, for more than two decades, it was a policy that allowed for big league dreams -- many that were realized.
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