Yasiel Puig’s Crazy Story Of Defection From Cuba

With President Obama on his Cuba trip, and more specifically being at a baseball game, that got us on the topic of people defecting to the US. One of the more interesting journeys is Yasiel Puig's.

It back in 2012, and Puig was defecting with a Cuban boxer named Yunior Despaigne. They were taken to Mexico and stashed in a motel for weeks by a group of smugglers with ties to the Mexican cartel. The agreement was the smugglers were going to sell Puig to a small time crook in Florida by the name of Raul Pacheco. Pacheco had agreed to pay the smugglers $250,000 for Puig. In return, Puig would pay Pacheco 20% of his salary when he signed an MLB contract.

Needless to say things did not go smoothly during the negotiation process, leading to Puig and Despaigne being held hostage by the smugglers. Pacheco then hired a group of men to bust them out.

The smugglers, still wanting their money, threatened Despaigne, his mother and Puig. Puig allegedly asked a business associate to help make the threats stop, which may have to led to an execution style killing of one of the the smugglers.

There is a lot more to this story, but this is basics of the crazy part.