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HAVANA (AP) – Nine of Cuba’s 24 players at the Under-23 Baseball World Cup have defected from the tournament in Mexico, the Cuban government confirmed on Sunday.
Cuban officials called the players’ actions “vile abandonment” in a memo posted by the JIT web portal, which is the official organ of the island’s National Sports Institute.
The institute did not identify the players who remained in Mexico.
The defection of nine players is one of the biggest losses of its kind for a Cuban team playing abroad. Cuban baseball players are often recruited by scouts looking to recruit them to play with major league clubs, and the strained relationship between the United States and Cuba prevents them from initiating a regular hiring process.
In 2018, the Caribbean nation signed a deal with Major League Baseball on normalizing sports relations, but it was quickly quashed by the Trump administration, which took a hard line against Cuba seeking to pressure the Communist government. of the island for political change.
Cuba finished their part of the Under-23 tournament on Saturday, losing to Colombia in the bronze medal game. The Under-23 World Cup took place in the state of Sonora, in northern Mexico.
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