Alonso Strikes a Chord With Fascinating Account of Cuba Defection

ANAHEIM - As Yonder Alonso was preparing for the 2017 season last winter, he was tackling another challenge too.

Over the course of three months, the A's first baseman gathered his thoughts and pieced together a fascinating first-person account for The Players' Tribune about his childhood experience defecting from Cuba with his parents and younger sister.

Alonso framed the article as him penning a letter to his 8-year-old self, describing the grueling struggle he and his family would go through while reassuring his younger self that it would all be worth it when he finally made it as a major leaguer. Alonso describes in vivid detail the hardships he went through, caring for his sister, Yainee, at night as they dined on meals of microwaved hot dogs and microwaved eggs, while his parents were away from home working multiple jobs to support their family.

Alonso goes on to describe how he would return from college baseball road trips, while he was attending the University of Miami, and immediately head to a night job to help his father clean warehouses and scrub bathrooms.

The story struck a chord within the A's clubhouse but also among so many people from the Miami area, where Alonso's family settled after they defected. Alonso said he's received text messages from many of them.

"I think everybody in this locker room, or any locker room, they definitely have a story to tell," Alonso said. "And I think it's awesome when you see a guy just kind of open up a little bit. I'm (usually) not one to open up."

Athletes are used to reporters peppering them with questions and trying to draw stories out of them. Seldom do athletes take to penning their own story.

Representatives from The Players' Tribune, an online publication started by Derek Jeter in 2014, reached out to Alonso in early December about writing something. Alonso had a trip planned to Cuba for later that month, before any request for an article came, and his return visit to his native country helped persuade him to go through with it.

"I saw a lot of people," he said. "For me it was very touching. For my wife as well."

Alonso met with an editor from The Players' Tribune during spring training, and they began hashing out ideas. Alonso said he wrote the story himself with assistance from the editor.

"We had ideas, different ways of going about it," he said. "I think from day one I knew the way I wanted to write it and how I wanted it to come out, which is a letter to my younger self."

Even after finishing the project three weeks ago, Alonso said he wasn't sure he wanted to share it publicly. He showed the article to some friends and teammates, including A's reliever Sean Doolittle and outfielder Matt Joyce. After reading the piece, Joyce strongly persuaded Alonso to carry through with it.

"I told him it was awesome," Joyce said. "From my perspective, you don't really get a good sense of what those guys go through, coming over to the States. You just see them later. So to kind of read it in his own words, it was a really cool perspective and a good story to see what a kid across the water, from a different country, goes through to get to this point. I think it's a very powerful story and message."

Alonso said his motivation was simple.

"Just letting my family know, and people in this world know, that if you want to strive for something, it can be tough at times. But there's always a light at the end of the tunnel."

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