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Sports

Trump's Stance on Cuba Could Affect MLB

Baseball, like the rest of the country, will have to wait and see what the new President does.
Photo by Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

There are going to be many (many, many) worries and uncertainties over what's to come from the Trump presidency but if you want to take a micro view for a moment and focus in on some of the most meaningless aspects of it, Donald Trump's White House could have an effect on Major League Baseball, too.

When President Obama opened up relations with Cuba, it also opened up a road to Cuba for MLB. Cuban players have had to defect and flee and take long, arduous, perilous paths to get to the United States, but that seemed on the verge of changing. Hell, Obama went to the country to watch an exhibition game last spring.

But Trump has promised to end the normalization of affairs with Cuba and reset the policy. Which means that MLB and Cuba could be apart again.

"Honestly, I think what the president-elect is thinking from a policy perspective is probably not as granular as to affect anything we're going to be doing in the next couple of years," commissioner Rob Manfred said this week, via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We'll know more as his policies actually become more concrete. Haven't heard anything with regards to the Cuba issue that would suggest there is going to be any change. We're all familiar with what he said about Mexico. We need to wait and see what actually happens."

So MLB now finds itself like everyone else: just waiting to see what change will come.

[Post-Dispatch]