with any major league organization. The Cuban infield prospect, who has privately worked out for several clubs, already is expected to spur the latest bidding war for Cuban talent.

Clearance to sign Moncada came through a memo i sued to all Major League clubs by the commi sioners office. As Je se Sanchez reported a MLB. Justin Jefferson T Shirts com, the memo followed a meeting between MLB officials and representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department'sOffice of Foreign A sets Control. At the meeting, baseball officialspre sed for clarification regarding new guidelines for a general license for an unblocked Cuban national.

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Meeting with OFAC officials was an important move in not only clarifying Moncadas status but that of future Cuban prospects who defect to a third country in order to establish residency and become free agents. Now MLB can abandon its policy of requiring a specific license from OFAC before declaring a Cuban defector is unblocked and eligible to be signed by major league organizations.

Beyond the legal aspects involved,resolution of Moncadas eligibility does not addre s Cuban baseballs future status with Major League Baseball.

Specifically, it does not settle the question ofwhether the system of talent procurement Major League Baseball will establish with Cuba will make the island-nationthe next Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.

In visiting Puerto Rico as the Puerto Rican League championship series was taking place, it was not difficult to see the pa sion that still exists at the Jaylen Twyman Jerseys ballparks in Mayaguez and Santurce. Likewise, those pa sions have been on full display at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, host of the 2015 Caribbean Series. The building of RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner-cities) academies on the island hasalso borne fruit, this most evident in the drafting of a number of Puerto Ricans trained at these academies, including the first pick of the 2012 MLB Draft,Carlos Correa.

Some are hopeful that this sparks a revival of baseball on the island, especially because recent history show troubling trends.

The number of Puerto Ricans in the Major Leagues has steadily declined over the past two decades. This trend has sparked enough alarm for some within Puerto Rican baseball circles to contemplate reversing what a generation earlier had been viewed as a hard-fought victory: Inclusion of Puerto Ricans in MLBs amateur draft.

That victory in 1989 came during the decade when Puerto Rico surpa sed Cuba as the main supplier of talent from Latin America. However, Puerto Ricos ascendance as the main foreign supplier of talent Jim Marshall Jerseys for MLB was as much a result of the closing off of Cuba as it was reflective of the intense pa sion for baseball on the island.

Puerto Rican greats Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepedaand Vic Power were vibrant members of baseballs pioneering generation who would be followed by the likes of Guillermo (Willie) Montaez, Felix Milln, and Jos Cruz. All of these Puerto Ricans were signed by major league organizations as amateur free agents, a status that did not end when MLB created its amateur draft in 1965.

The fact that Puerto Ricans were the lone U.S. citizens that MLB excluded from its amateur draft (which somehow included Canadians), eventually motivated an effort by Puerto Ricans to be included: Their prime goal was to secure all the protections that came with being drafted (protections established by MLB official rules) versus the free-for-all that surrounded the signing of amateur free agents in Latin America. That effort realized its objective in 1989.

Quite surprisingly, a decade later the total number of Puerto Ricans in MLB had declined, as has baseballs popularity on the island, especially among the younger generation. By the start of the 21st century, Puerto Rico had fallen well behind the Dominican Republic in terms of talent development for MLB. Greg Joseph Jerseys

Dominicans entered the major league orbit decades later than their Caribbean neighbors. Cubans came first. Cubans were signed by minor league teams in the 1900s, but the country'sbreakthrough to the Majors occurred in 1911 with the debut of Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida with the Reds. Puerto Ricans broke through in 1942 with Hiram Bithornpitching for theCubs.

The Dominican Republic did not truly register as a talent source on MLBs radar until the 1980s. The New York/San Francisco Giants organization had made the first inroads after its 1950 hire of former Negro League team owner Alex Pompez to oversee its Latin American scouting. Through Pompez the Giants established a Dominican talent pipeline which yielded Juan Marichal, the Alou brothersand Manny Mota, among others. However, the Giants Dominican succe s was the result of a scouting network built on contacts from Pompezs thirty-year involvement in the Negro Leagues and Latin America.

The Dominican academy system was truly a modern innovation that evolved from the Dodgers' and Blue Jays' involvement in the Dominican Republic during the 1980s. The academy system is also a product of how MLB has approached Latin American baseball, a subject provocatively analyzed by historian Jake Bargas Jerseys Rob Ruck in his 2011 book,

Castros declared end of Cuban profe sional baseball and the start of the U.S. trade embargo closed off Cuba. Puerto Ricos status as a U.S. territory meant that MLB ultimately had to abide byfederal laws in its desire to acquire baseball talent from that island. The Dominican Republics status as an independent nation, however, provided a setting where MLB organizations could cultivate a new system of talent procurement.

The rationale for establishing the academy system was a familiar one for Major League Baseball: it had long sought to acquire Latin American talent on the cheap. This, according to former Rockies vice-president Dick Balderson, produced a boatload mentality among those involved in the Dominican Republic. Kellen Mond Jerseys This mentality inspired the practice of signing dozens of teenage Dominican prospects for low signing bonuses in the hope that one or perhaps two make the grade.

Interestingly, as baseball scholar Alan Klein notes in his 2014 book what has disrupted this MLB mi sion in the Dominican Republic has been the entrepreneurial zeal of Dominicans. Specifically, Dominicans created the buscnes system wherein independent talent developers prepare Dominican youth for their Major League showcase in the hopes of producing even larger signing bonus. The buscnes system, according to Klein, represents the effort of Dominicans to insert themselves and profit from the talent procurement system that MLB has created in the DR. Kleins argument puts a different spin on the protestations of MLB officials and North American sportswriters about the manipulation of MLB rules th