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Throwing Cuban players a lifeline

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

Agent JOE CUBAS has turned paupers into princes--but not without raising a sea of disturbing questions

Slowly, gingerly, Joe Cubas reaches out one meaty hand, then the other, and wraps his fingers around a rusty barbed-wire fence. Squinting against a brilliant Caribbean sun, he peers across a muddy, shadeless courtyard to where dozens of Cuban refugees are wildly shouting "Cubas si, Castro no!" The scene dearly moves Cubas, a man never far from an emotion under even the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances.

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Although there are nearly 200 people crammed inside this gulag the Bahamian government insists is a refugee camp, Cubas cares about only five--four baseball players and a coach who escaped Cuba in a flimsy boat. Last December, Cubas had come to the Carmichael Road Detention Center and left with eight Cubans, including Orlando Hernandez, for whom Cubas would negotiate a $6.6 million contract.

Thanks to Cubas, you will see "El Duque" Hernandez pitching in this year's postseason for the Yankees, just as you saw his half-brother, Livan Hernandez, a former Cubas client, win the World Series MVP Award for the Marlins last year. And as you saw the Devil Rays' Rolando Arrojo, another Cubas client, pitch in last month's All-Star Game.

Undoubtedly, Joe Cubas has changed the face of baseball in the late 1990s, but which is the real Joe Cubas: the humanitarian son of Cuban immigrants interested only in helping his people, or the hard-edged sports agent interested only in making a buck? The truth is, he's both. Because although El Duque and Livan are success stories, there are those who believed in Cubas yet did not benefit. In many cases, they ended up worse off.

Alberto Hernandez, once a star defensive catcher for the Cuban national team, risked his life in defecting with Orlando Hernandez only to be left in Costa Rica when E1 Duque flew off to sign with the Yankees. More than 100 refugees who so wildly welcomed Cubas to the Bahamas in March--including three of the four baseball players--were forcibly returned to Cuba, where they face a bleak future.

And then there's Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, a cousin and onetime partner of Cubas who was sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison after he was caught trying to help players defect.

A number of those who met with Hernandez Nodar-Alberto Hernandez among them--were immediately banned from Cuban baseball, and although Cubas insists his cousin was working on his own, rumors continue to circulate that Hernandez Nodar was doing Cubas' bidding.

Suddenly those million-dollar contracts don't seem like such a bargain after all. "You look at how many lives have been destroyed," says ally-turned-rival Juan C. Iglesias, who represents Livan Hernandez, "and you wonder."

Cubas blames all such criticism on jealousy. "I'm not even going to respond to that," he says. "I've never had enemies. But I've made enemies because of people's ambitions."

When Cubas returned to the Bahamas last March, the rest of the rafters--those who can't throw or hit a slider--were determined they wouldn't be left be hind. First they cajoled Joe Cubas, chanting and singing his name. Next they staged a hunger strike. Eventually they rioted.

In Miami, politicians and community leaders who once rallied to Cubas' side were quick to scorn him. Soon Cubas was trying to arrange shipments of food and medicine to the camp. Cubas came to Nassau needing five humanitarian visas; within days he was asking the Costa Rican government for 151.

"He went over there just to help the ballplayers, came under intense criticism and decided, 'Maybe I better try to help these people,'" says Ike Seamans, the senior correspondent for WTVJ-TV, NBC's Miami affiliate, and a confidant of Cubas'.

But if Cubas discovered his heart an hour from Miami, he also found a gold mine, and it has proved to hold a vein so rich that he hopes to soon give up his role as one of baseball's most influential agents to become its first Hispanic club owner.

Last month, a group of Miami-based Hispanic businessmen, led by Cubas, made an offer to buy the Marlins from Wayne Huizenga. (Cubas already has met with city leaders about his proposal for a new $250 million retractable-dome stadium adjacent to the Miami Heat's new arena on the city's waterfront.)

But how would Cubas' take-no-prisoners style in the cliquish world of baseball ownership? No one is sure--or willing to comment for the record, anyway.

Commissioner Bud Selig says running a team in today's high-dollar, high-pressure environment is something you can learn only by doing. "The only ting that really matters," Selig says, "is the quality of the person."

And how does Cubas rate on that scale? The commissioner, like a half-dozen other baseball executives contacted for this story, wouldn't say: "I really don't know him," Selig said.

Cubas, who would be managing general partner, says his prospective ownership group has financial commitments of $180 million, $11 million beyond Huizenga's asking price. The Cubas group's only rival, a team led by Marlins president Don Smiley, reportedly is $40 million short despite $60 million in bank loans and Huizenga's pledging $25 million. As for the two sides linking ownership arms, one local newspaper says the chances "are as good as the Marlins' repeating as world champs this year." If sale negotiations get serious, then Cubas says he will suspend his duties as an agent. If the talks fail--and Huizenga is giving the Smiley-led group, which labels Cubas' bid "a joke," every opportunity by extending deadline after deadline--then Cubas plans to continue representing players.

Throwing Cuban players a lifeline

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

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