Next Cuban in the Major Leagues EXCLUSIVELY: “Indescribable emotion when calling my parents in Cuba”

By Yasel Porto

Little by little, Cuba is approaching its record for the greatest number of representatives in a single Major League season. We haven’t even been two months yet and another player has just been called who will very soon set the figure at 26, and in his particular case it will represent his debut in the best baseball in the world.

This is Camagüey’s outfielder Dayron Blanco, who this Wednesday received the call from the Kansas City Royals while playing his match in Omaha in the AAA class. As soon as the news was known, we contacted the talented player to have more first-hand details.

“I was in the middle of my game and all of a sudden they told me that I had to prepare to travel to Kansas City, because the Royals had asked me to join. I was super happy and immediately called my parents to tell them the news. Impossible to describe the emotion », he confessed to me while waiting for his flight to the city of Missouri. “Everything seemed like a dream to me, although I have been working hard for a while now to achieve this goal.”

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In March I had the opportunity to talk for a while with the 29-year-old outfielder, and he insisted that he had focused a lot this year to finish achieving the goal of reaching the Major Leagues. Not a few agreed that he was one of the biggest candidates to move up to the first team, even before the start of the 2022 season.

In the current campaign at the Double A level, Blanco had not excelled too much in some parameters, but in others he had. In his records they appear five homers and 15 RBIs, plus a .805 OPS and a .369 OPSS. Last year he finished with 14 homers between AA and AAA.

Dayron Blanco played in Cuba between 2013 and 2016, and in addition to the Bulls uniform, he also wore the Leones y Alazanes uniform as reinforcement. He then emigrated and in 2018 he made his professional debut in the United States with the Royals organization, and little by little he was climbing positions and showing his potential.

The player will join Mayabeque pitcher Ronald Bolaños in Kansas City’s main roster, and when he performs he will become the 26th Cuban of the season and the 380th for life. Counting, of course, the most recent update of the players of the Negro Leagues.

Dayron has almost his entire family in Cuba, in which his parents Magdalena Lamadrid Rivas and Ignacio Blanco Rodríguez are undoubtedly the most important members of the same, even though many received this news with great joy. And I’m not just talking about those close to him, but about a large number of Cubans who feel tremendous pride with this type of event that ratifies the quality of the players born on the largest Caribbean island.