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XXXXX DRUDGE RETORT XXXXX 16:53:02 UTC TUE APR 13 2000 XXXXX Elian Traded for Hard-Throwing Righthander!
By Rogers Cadenhead In a deal that has the backing of the U.S. Department of Justice and representatives of Miami's Cuban-American community, Elian Gonzalez was traded to Cuba today for right-handed pitcher Jose Ariel Contreras and a defector to be named later. "This is a win-win deal," Attorney General Janet Reno said. "Contreras will contribute right away to one of our ballclubs and Elian's father gets to raise his son in the peace and quiet of an embargoed communist bloc nation." Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who helped broker meetings between U.S. government officials and Miami relatives, backed the trade. "Elian will be missed, but he was going to be a free agent," Penelas told the DRUDGE RETORT. "A child's freedom is a small price to pay for starting pitching." Contreras, 29, was the star of the first exhibition game between Cuba and the Baltimore Orioles in 1999, pitching eight strong shutout innings. Gonzalez, 6, was the star of a failed defection to the United States on Thanksgiving Day 1999, clinging to an inner tube for 10 strong hours in the Florida Straits. Political commentator George Will, a onetime candidate for baseball commissioner, calls the trade a "grand slam" in an upcoming column. "There's no guarantee that Elian Gonzalez would have developed the baseball playing skills that are so commonplace among his island people," Will writes. "If he grows up and becomes a bandleader instead, Fidel Castro will rue the day he made this move." A last-minute effort to include Cuban designated hitter Orestes Kindelan in the deal fell through. Castro, a onetime pitching prospect for the Washington Senators, offered Kindelan for Elian's hot 21-year-old cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez. "They wanted to send my daughter into a life of communist oppression," Lazaro Gonzalez told a reporter for TEEN EN ESPANOL. "We wanted a position player." One provision of the deal is that Contreras cannot be signed by either Toronto or Montreal, the two Canadian teams in the Major Leagues. "If Canada wants him, they'll have to take back Celine Dion," Reno said. The RETORT moves when circumstances warrant © DRUDGE RETORT 2000 |