By Rob Rains
JUPITER, Fla. – For three days Cesar Prieto had barely slept. He was nervous and worried, thinking about the decision that was about to change his life forever.
Prieto, now in his second spring training with the Cardinals, knew he was doing the right thing for his future – but that didn’t make what he was about to do any easier.
A member of the Cuban national team, Prieto and his teammates were going to the United States to play in an Olympic qualifying tournament in May 2021, just days after his 22nd birthday.
Only a few people knew what Prieto knew – that he would not be coming back. He literally was going to be running away from everything he had known, headed toward a new life.
“It was really, really scary because I was coming to a place where I didn’t know anybody and didn’t have anything,” Prieto said. “It was super scary.
“I slept maybe two or three hours in three days because I was thinking about my decision.”
“All I want to do is play baseball”
The first time Prieto saw what the world outside of Cuba was like was in 2017, when he was a member of the Cuban team that traveled to the Under 18 World Cup tournament in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
What Prieto saw on that trip to Canada was eye-opening.
“Everything was completely different,” he said. “I saw a different way of playing baseball than what we were playing in Cuba.”
Prieto, who had been introduced to baseball when he was a young boy by his father, returned to the family’s vegetable farm in the small town of Simpatia. His father and grandfather had both played baseball and his father took him to his first game when he was 6.
“As soon as my dad introduced me to baseball I fell in love with the sport,” said Prieto, who spoke in Spanish with Cardinals’ bullpen catcher Kleininger Teran serving as his interpreter.
Prieto’s grandfather, who saw his talent, would not allow Prieto to do much work on the family’s farm.
“As a little kid my grandpa didn’t let me help at all,” Prieto said. “I did sometimes, just a little bit. My grandpa took care of me so much he didn’t let me do things that could cost me a little bit in the future.”
Prieto’s grandpa thought Prieto’s future was playing baseball.
Prieto, who had become serious about the sport when he was about 15, knew that players from Cuba who wanted to succeed in the game had to leave the country with a hope of making it to the United States and the major leagues.
Those players were not allowed to leave just because they wanted to, however.
When he returned home from the trip to Canada, the oldest of the five Prieto children sat down with his dad and talked about what he had seen, and shared his thoughts about wanting to have a future in baseball outside of Cuba.
“I wanted to develop in Cuba but at the same time I didn’t want to stop there and not have a future,” Prieto said. “All I want to do is play baseball” he told his father.
His parents understood the spot their son was in, and they expressed support for his decision. His grandfather, however, raised doubts and concerns.
“My grandparents didn’t want me to leave,” Prieto said. “If you leave you have to start all over again from zero. It was not easy at all to leave.”
Even though Prieto knew what he wanted to do, he didn’t know how. He was able to connect with somebody who said they could help him.
“I saw an opportunity and I made the decision to do it,” Prieto said.
Then, the waiting began. How, and when, he could escape were the two biggest questions. And what Prieto had no way of knowing when he was beginning to make his plans in 2019 was that a pandemic was about to hit Cuba and the rest of the world, with Covid shutting down almost all travel outside of the country.
Even after some of the travel restrictions were lifted, Prieto didn’t know when his opportunity was going to come. Finally, the Cuban team was able to obtain U.S. visas to travel to West Palm Beach, Fla., for an Olympics qualifying tournament.
“I had the same mindset about leaving,” Prieto said. “That was the perfect moment for me to do it, when I got the visa. I made the decision to do it. It was the best moment.”
It also was an emotional moment. Cuban residents, not just baseball players, who leave the country illegally are blocked from returning for eight years.
As he said goodbye to his parents and grandparents, Prieto didn’t know when he would be able to see them again.
“I told my parents I was going to leave,” he said, and they gave him their blessing to go. “I was going to leave even if they said no. I was not going to change my mind.”
Prieto joined his teammates and on the morning of May 26, 2021, got on a plane to fly from Cuba to Miami, where a bus would be waiting to take the team to its hotel in West Palm Beach.
“I wasn’t going back to Cuba”
Prieto knew the plan. He had been told that when he got off the bus at the hotel, a car would be waiting for him. He was instructed to run from the bus to the car, and not to look back.
With his heart racing, the bus pulled up to the hotel. Prieto got off, and as his teammates gathered their bags and headed into the hotel, he took off.
The car was there. He jumped into the back seat. His trip to freedom had begun.
“In that moment I wasn’t thinking about getting caught,” he said. “I was thinking only positive things. I never thought about what would happen if I got caught. That never went through my mind.”
The car drove to a nearby mall. After mixing in with the crowd, Prieto and those who were helping him got back in the car and drove to an apartment, where they stayed for a couple of days.
Prieto called his father on the phone to tell him he had made it. He cried, but he still knew in his heart he had done the right thing.
“After two days I adapted to the weather and where I was,” he said. “I had it in my mind at that point that I wasn’t going back to Cuba.”
“He wasn’t a secret”
By that time, Prieto was well known to international scouts. Even though scouts are not allowed into Cuba, they can watch the Cuban teams in tournaments such as the one in Canada in 2017, where Prieto hit .581 with two three-hit games and one game in which he had four hits. He also starred in the 2019 Pan-American Games, hitting .438.
“He wasn’t a secret,” said Moises Rodriguez, the Cardinals’ assistant general manager who is in charge of international scouting. “Our scouts had seen him at different events. Wherever Cuba goes they get heavily scouted.”
Scouts also pay attention to how players perform in the top leagues in Cuba, and in his last season in his native country, playing for Cienfuegos, Prieto hit .403 with seven homers and 78 runs scored in 74 games. In 360 plate appearances, he walked 31 times with only 11 strikeouts. He also had a 44-game hitting streak.
After settling near Tampa, Fla., following his defection, Prieto had to wait until he was cleared by Major League Baseball, and declared an international free agent, before he could begin working out and talking with teams.
One of the teams that was interested was the Orioles.
“We had a lot of history on him and we did a pretty good job of recruiting him after he was cleared,” said Koby Perez, the scout who signed Prieto who is now the Vice President of International Scouting and Operations for the Orioles. “We were able to watch him play and our GM Mike Elias and manager Brandan Hyde were able to work him out. It was a good recruiting tool for us.”
Eight months after he ran his way to freedom, on Jan. 15, 2022, Prieto signed with the Orioles for a $650,000 bonus.
“For these guys it’s a tough journey,” Perez said. “Their families are back in Cuba, they really are chasing a dream and it’s all or nothing for them. He was an accomplished player and for him to take the steps to make it, it’s always difficult.”
While the Cardinals had scouts who saw him, Prieto surfaced more on their radar in trade talks with the Orioles in 2023 and became part of the deal on Aug. 1 that sent Jack Flaherty to Baltimore.
He finished that season at Memphis and played there in 2024 as well, when he hit .279 with 14 homers and 56 RBIs. Prieto is a lifetime .292 hitter in the minor leagues
While happy with how he has played in his minor-league career, with a goal of playing in the majors, Prieto knows that simply getting out of Cuba was the right decision for him – no matter what happens in his career. It was the right move not only for him personally but also for his family.
After he was able to establish permanent residency in Florida, Prieto was able to get his father, mother and two brothers out of Cuba, one at a time, a process that involved them having to go through Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico before they were allowed to enter the U.S. He could not, however, talk his grandfather into joining them in the U.S.
“He didn’t want to come,” Prieto said.
Prieto says that he doesn’t think much about May 26, 2021 and his mad dash to freedom that day. He does know, however, what he would be doing had he stayed in his native country.
“It would have been complete madness,” he said. “A disaster. The farm was my home, and I know I would be there, working the farm, and playing baseball.
“It would be nothing like this.”
Follow Rob Rains on X @RobRains
Photos by Taka Yanagimoto, courtesy of St. Louis Cardinals
