The Telegraph
Millions of dollars await Cuba’s missing baseball ace
The riches that await Cesar Prieto could be vast. But for one of the most talented Cuban baseball players of his generation to seize a lucrative multi-million dollar professional contract he must first re-emerge from hiding. After disappearing into a waiting car just hours after touching down with the national team in America, his whereabouts have been a mystery since Thursday. His own government, meanwhile, stands humiliated. Mr Prieto, 22, is arguably the most high profile Cuban sportsman to defect to the US since José Abreu in 2016, but he follows many hundreds of compatriots, very few of whom succeed. The Cuban team is in the United States to take part in a qualifying tournament for the Tokyo Olympics. There had been fears they would fail to get visas because the US embassy in Havana has been closed to all but emergency consular services since 2018 with visa requests handled in other countries.
