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Chicago Cubs: Willson Contreras and MLB’s Venezuela crisis
By Jim Guzior
Chicago Cubs: Venezuela Crisis Affects MLB Recruiting
But what impact can Willson make in a country that has been starving for almost four years. The Chicago Cubs and other MLB organizations have assets in these countries to help in recruiting but the current regime’s efforts are starving the pool of viable future MLB players. Maduro is effectively starving baseball out of Venezuela while blaming the tight sanctions imposed by the U.S. as the culprit of the country’s famishment. Hugh Bronstein of Reuters reported in 2017:
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"Venezuela is home to superstar players…With a record 76 Venezuelan nationals playing on Major League Baseball (MLB) teams at the start of this season, the country’s agent-operated baseball academies are expected to keep steering high-performing prospects to big league scouts. But the country’s food shortages are taking a toll, as malnourished kids from low-income families are denied entry to academies that have become the only way to guarantee the kind of diet needed to build a world-class player."
I don’t mean in any fashion to negate the real problems the people in Venezuela are facing right now which include but are not limited to starvation, homelessness, poverty and sickness without aid. However, I am a sports writer and so my focus is also the impact that this crisis is having on MLB and the Chicago Cubs recruiting prospects. If Bronstein was concerned in 2017, how bad have things gotten in 2019? Apparently, the crisis is now a national emergency and so every part of life including MLB / Chicago Cubs recruiting has been affected. Heck, there isn’t even any electricity! It is this aspect that makes Willson the most frustrated at the situation.