MIAMI — Three hours out of the Florida Keys, within wading distance of Cuba's north-central coast, a 28-foot speedboat slowed, its pilot cut the engine, and the sleek hull slid silently to a stop on an ink black sea.
Rain squalls had passed, but a trailing band of storm clouds lingered, hiding the moon -- perfect cover for the night's illicit mission: smuggling.
The unusual contraband loaded aboard that night in 2004 wasn't dope; it wasn't even the typical, ragtag human cargo of desperate asylum seekers. But the value of even a small boatload of the smuggled goods could run into the millions of dollars.
On Big Pine Key, a three-hour high-speed cruise across the Florida Straits, Ysbel Santos-Medina waited to take delivery along a stretch of beach about 30 miles north of Key West. The former truck driver and small-time drug trafficker, a mastermind of smuggling logistics, had arranged everything. His last responsibility would be forwarding the goods to California.
Medina's contraband on that summer night represented the latest thing in Caribbean region smuggling -- five Cuban baseball players.
Today, top pitchers and shortstops have surpassed dope, rum and tobacco as the commodities of choice for traffickers working the old Spanish Main.
Each of the smuggled ballplayers -- former stars of domestic Cuban teams -- arrived in the U.S. hoping to follow in the cleat marks of previous defectors such as pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez of the New York Mets.
Their crossing that night was financed, according to court documents and testimony, with payments totaling $225,000 by an Encino sports agent who would become the first agent ever convicted on federal charges of smuggling athletes.
But this was no isolated episode. Since 2000, about 40 other Cuban players have been spirited out of the island nation on similar smuggling runs. Origins of this odd black market can be traced to the confluence of three seemingly random elements:
* A crackdown on athlete defections by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's government that has intensified over the last decade;
* Exceptions to federal immigration policy that apply uniquely to Cubans seeking asylum;
* Uncertain enforcement of arcane rules by Major League Baseball dating back 30 years that reflect baseball's efforts to conform with the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba.
