And a high fly ball in the deep left center of Banachuba has arrived and we have a five-five time.

And the fly ball, the deep right blanks to the track. It is gone.

He has hit another one.

Okay, Viva Cuba, Viva Queen. And it's 8-6 Dodgers, can you believe it?

Good morning and welcome to episode 428 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index.

I'm Ben Linberg. Samiller is on vacation, so I'm joined today by Jason Voicicowski, who has filled in for Sam before. Hello, Jason.

I thought I was going to be Sam. Yes, I thought we agreed on that. You can roleplay, if you'd like.

And we are also joined by a distinguished guest today, Jesse Katz, who is a long-time journalist reporter,

spent many years at the Los Angeles Times and is a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine,

where he wrote a really in-depth feature for the May issue that you can read online now about Yasiel Puig and Puig's escape from Cuba,

his journey from Cuba to the United States via Mexico. And a lot of the shady aspects of that journey and a little bit about Puig himself.

So it's a really interesting story. It's a bit more in-depth than your typical hot take on Puig being late for a game and not being in the lineup.

So thanks for joining us, Jesse.

Hey, it's a great pleasure, Ben and Jason.

So for people who don't know, can you give a little bit of background on how exactly a player gets from Cuba to the United States

and the arcane rules and laws and lack of laws governing that process?

Sure, one of the problems is that there is no legitimate way. There is no humanitarian boat lift taking players like Yasiel Puig and delivering them to the major leagues.

It really requires a series of kind of illicit steps. First, you have to escape from Cuba.

And I am hardly a Cuba basher, but it's kind of extraordinary that anytime you have a people that are prohibited from crossing their own borders, it's troubling.

And Yasiel had to make multiple attempts to get out of Cuba. I was able to document five of them. There may be more, but he finally succeeded.

And you don't just do it on your own. You don't just hop in a rowboat and head for Florida. You're putting your life on the line and you're hoping that there's millions of dollars waiting for you at the end of that journey.

You need smugglers. You need smugglers to get yourself off the island of Cuba.

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