NYT: Schwarz: Whispering Goodbye to Cuba’s Dominant Past (RR)

I stopped in Flaco’s Cubano Bookie

Bodega today. Not a pretty sight.

“Omar Ajete, he was one of the most dominant left-handers you’ll ever see,” Mike Brito, a longtime scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, said of the Cuban closer from one decade ago. “Germán Mesa, he was so close to Ozzie Smith at shortstop. He could do everything just like Smith.”

Orrin Freeman, a Florida Marlins scout, still wonders what the cannon-armed Lázaro Valle would have become had a blood clot not intervened. (“He was about the same age as Roger Clemens, 94 to 98 fastball, an overmatching slider and an intimidator,” Freeman said.) Orestes Kindelan was all but Harmon Killebrew, Antonio Muñoz another Willie McCovey.

The most revered of all is always Omar Linares, a third baseman who stood out even among his countrymen throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Freeman called Linares a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Mets General Manager Omar Minaya compared him to Alex Rodriguez, adding that Linares could easily have played shortstop if Cuba’s Mesa was not already one of the best on the planet.

Scouts all over the world drooled over Linares. The Dodgers’ Brito said a Japanese team offered Cuba the equivalent of $10 million to sign him. The United States trade embargo left him off-limits to major league scouts, but one of the juiciest rumors of the late 1980s was that the Toronto Blue Jays and their ingenious general manager, Pat Gillick, were plotting to sign Linares and have him play only home games in Canada.