Cuban ballplayers remember Garbey
By Tom Weir, USA TODAY

WIXOM, Mich. — When baseball talk turns to Cuban
players, the focus usually is on half-brothers Livan
and Orlando Hernandez or the first wave of high-priced
defectors from the 1990s.

But lost in the discussion of players who fled Fidel
Castro's communist island is the story of the
outfielder who 25 years ago was the first member of
Cuba's national baseball team to leave.

Barbaro Garbey was one of 125,000 Mariel Boatlift
refugees welcomed to the USA by the Carter
administration in 1980, when Castro temporarily lifted
his no-exit edict. Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose
Contreras, who defected from Cuba in 2002, says Garbey
is a hero.

"Everyone knows who he is in Cuba," Contreras says.
"Everyone knows that he's the first one."


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