The boys gathered by the stands of the main field after finishing their work at the academy. These teenaged Dominican ballplayers had spent their morning training and dreaming of the major leagues. The players—gangly and pimple faced—now hoped to latch onto someone else’s dream. They hoped to catch a glimpse of the Cuban.
“Where is he?” one asked.
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“I think he’s over there,” said another, who pointed toward center field.
By then, the field had filled up with several players, team executives, and trainers.
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The players filtered into their seats and began yelling and talking loudly, creating the atmosphere of a regular season game. These types of workouts happen every day in the Dominican, but players like the Cuban don’t show up every day. At one point, a team official on the field told the boys to quiet down. This was not a game. This was a workout, the official reminded them.
Not so long ago there had been only trees, shrubbery, and dirt—a jungle—where this academy stood. But now this was a place of serious business; a place where transactions happened, where futures were determined. On a given day, million dollar deals could be made in the very bleachers where these kids sat.
None of the players said the Cuban’s name. He was simply referred to as “el Cubano.” They likely didn’t even know his name. They didn’t need to know it. When someone spoke of the Cuban, everyone knew who they were talking about.
By this point it had become obvious that the team—which will not be named because this workout was not open to the public or to the press—had serious interest in signing the Cuban. He had worked out for this club on three other occasions. But the Cuban was close to making a decision, so the team wanted one last look.
Even after scanning the field for several moments, the boys still couldn’t pick out the Cuban amongst the crowd. But soon, a large, muscular figure wearing a neon workout shirt and form fitting baseball pants emerged from the dugout and headed toward the bathroom. The boys watched every step. There he was. The Cuban.
“You know, those Cuban guys all like to wear tight clothes,” one of the boys remarked.
“He’s got a big ass,” said another player.
Shortly afterward, this big assed player put on a show during batting practice that reinforced why he was on the verge of signing a big ass contract.
Photo by Koji Watanabe via Getty
The most prized free agent hitter on the market might not have even played baseball had he been born anywhere other than Cuba.
“If I had been born in the United States I probably would have been a football player,” Yasmani Tomas said in Spanish last week in an interview in Boca Chica.
When asked what position in football he might have played, the 23-year-old Tomas smiled and said, “defense.”
Tomas, whose father was a truck driver in Havana, has the eye-catching size of an NFL player. He is not immensely tall—listed at 6’1″—but he is thick, almost 230 pounds. He began playing baseball at age six, and quickly became a star on junior national teams, and then eventually the senior national team. He is not especially fast, but he moves easily for a player of his size. During workouts he takes fly balls in the outfield and fields ground balls at third base. But most people believe that when Tomas does sign with a big league team, it will be to play right field.
That moment is fast approaching. When asked when his client would be signing a contract, Raul Javier, who is Tomas’ Dominican-based trainer, smiled from ear to ear and said, “very soon.”
Javier’s smile came in part because his client’s arduous and lengthy process—defection from Cuba in June, free agency clearance in October, workouts almost every day since then—will be mercifully coming to an end. Most big league Cuban players would say that the most difficult part of their journey to the majors—aside from the treacherous escape from their home country—is the seemingly interminable wait to actually sign. Getting the proper paperwork can take months.
But Javier’s smile is mostly born of the belief—based on accounts from team executives, agents, and other observers—that Tomas will sign the biggest free agent contract ever given to a Cuban exile. The prediction is that he will almost surely surpass or at least equal Rusney Castillo’s seven-year, $72.5 million contract with the Boston Red Sox.
“It’s great to have that opportunity, but my objective has always been just to play baseball,” Tomas said of the possibility of getting a record-breaking deal. “I love baseball. As a boy, I was always passionate about baseball. And I just want to keep playing and see what the possibilities can be. The money isn’t necessarily going to be the most important thing I think about.”
Tomas’ potential at the plate is why teams covet him. At a time when offensive players are at premium, Tomas’ immense power will likely land him in the middle of the lineup for whatever team signs him from the moment he makes his first appearance. The Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, and San Diego Padres—teams that ranked near the bottom in nearly all offensive categories last year—have scouted Tomas several times. He will likely choose a team from that list.
Prior to one team workout last week—while Tomas sat quietly in the dugout putting on his batting gloves—Javier looked toward right center field and pointed toward two black SUVs parked several feet beyond the outfield wall.
“I bet you $5,000 pesos that he hits one of those cars,” Javier told one of his assistants.
The aide shook his head and walked away. He was not going to make that sucker bet. As a bit of courtesy, the aide walked to a team official and suggested the cars be moved out of the way. The SUVs were driven to a safer area.
Sure enough, by the end of his impressive round of batting practice, Tomas—a right-handed hitter with prodigious opposite field power—had crushed several balls over that right-center field wall with an almost effortless, compact swing. Each blast brought gasps and laughs from Tomas’ friends, who were watching in the dugout.
Tomas and his friends—who now form part of his entourage— made their way to Haiti shortly after escaping Cuba, according to a source close to the situation. The group was then picked up in Haiti and brought to the Dominican where Tomas—after signing with the U.S. based agent Jay Alou—linked up with Javier. Tomas himself declined to share any details of his journey other than to say the decision to defect was not an easy one.
“People in their heart always have the goal of challenging themselves at the highest level,” Tomas said. “And I think everybody knows that Major League Baseball is the best baseball in the world. And I want the opportunity to play against the best players.”
While many Cuban players arrive from their home country empty handed, Tomas appeared to be given special care during his trip. He totes around his Cuban national team duffle bag from workout to workout and he wears his Cuban national team cap. Most Cuban defectors hardly have time to gather such belongings—or else they fear the attention that transporting them could draw.
Since his arrival in the Dominican, Tomas has been given the best care. He is well fed, well clothed, and well trained. He drives from place to place in a black SUV. He uses bats with his name engraved on them. Undoubtedly, Tomas’ handlers want to keep him happy.
“We bring him a special contraband of food from Cuba,” joked one of Tomas’ trainers.
Tomas has quickly adjusted to life in the Dominican Republic.
“You know, it’s not much different here,” he said. “Cuba and the Dominican are very similar.”
Tomas—still unaccustomed to interviews—appears most comfortable when he is joking around with friends and can display his booming, loud personality. He enjoys reminiscing about his early playing career.
After one workout, Tomas sat in the dugout and recalled the time he was called up to play in a game in the northern part of the country for the Havana Industriales—one of the top teams in Cuba’s Serie Nacional—at age 17. Nervously, Tomas said he sat in the dugout all game long until he was called to pinch-hit in the late innings with the bases loaded.
At that point in telling the story, Tomas got up from his seat in the dugout and mimicked standing in the batter’s box. He pantomimed a few wild swings to show how overmatched he felt during those first few pitches. But then Tomas straightened up, gripped his hands—one on top of the other—and glared ahead, as if he had been sent back in time and was actually back in that batter’s box in Cuba.
He rocked his hands back and then took a big swing.
“Boom!” he said while his friends laughed at the silly gestures.
Tomas hit a home run that day, and that’s when the legend began.
******
Most of the Dominican boys had settled into their seats by the start of live batting practice. The Cuban had first been matched up against a free agent minor league pitcher who was looking for a new opportunity and would be showing off his best stuff.
The Cuban stepped into the batter’s box and stared toward the mound. The pitcher—tall, muscular, and dark skinned—stared back. He was not going to be intimidated. He wound up and threw a fastball. The Cuban took a mighty hack and missed.
Several teenaged players stood up and started yelling.
“Wow!”
These players asked the person with the speed gun to relay the velocity of the pitch. The person raised his hands and showed nine digits and then five. 95 mph.
The matchup continued. The Cuban fouled off several pitches, but he mostly just watched them land in the catcher’s mitt. In reality, the free agent pitcher had more at stake during this live batting practice session than the Cuban. Team executives simply wanted to see if they could get a handle of the Cuban’s pitch recognition. They didn’t need him to swing and crush every pitch.
The Cuban finished his session with the free agent and then faced several other pitchers who had come to try out. At one point, the Cuban launched a line drive home run over the right center field fence that had barely appeared to lift off the ground.
That homer caused the boys to turn wide-eyed toward each other.
Gradually, most of the boys retreated back to their dorm rooms after having watched the Cuban take a few rounds of live batting practice. These tryouts can very quickly turn boring. You end up watching the same thing over and over again.
Only a small handful of players remained by the time the Cuban—after having finished live batting practice and fielded ground balls and fly balls—took regular batting practice. Those who stayed were treated to a show.
The Cuban launched almost every ball over the fence. Some landed way past the centerfield wall and hit the washroom near the dorms. Others landed deep into a grove of trees past the left field wall. A loud noise reverberated each time the ball struck a tree or hit a building. Many of the boys who had gone back to their rooms began to reappear. Some watched from outside the second floor of the dorm as balls landed just below them. This was the show they had been anticipating.
Several days later, one of the boys who had been in the stands the day the Cuban had worked out at the academy nervously approached a reporter at a restaurant in Santo Domingo.
“You were there that day with the Cuban, right?” the player—a pitcher from Santiago—asked.
The reporter confirmed that he had been there.
The player smiled, shook his head from side to side, and then said, “Wow.”
