DUNEDIN, Fla. – On the far aisle in the clubhouse, the first two lockers belong to Kendrys Morales and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. It is a logical juxtaposition. They are new to the Toronto Blue Jays, but not to each other.

They first met 15 years ago, back home in Cuba, when Gurriel was eight years old. Morales was 18 and the country’s best baseball player. Gurriel was the youngest member of the first family of Cuban baseball, a callow kid with a distinguished pedigree.

His father is a legend in his homeland. That connection, ironically, played an important part in the son escaping from Cuba and becoming a Blue Jay.

Now Morales and Gurriel share a clubhouse and an agent as well as a homeland. One is a veteran designated hitter, the other an aspiring shortstop who also has played a lot of outfield. Both escaped Cuba to chase their dream, Morales in 2004 on a crowded raft across the Florida Straits, Gurriel in 2016 on a serpentine road through five countries.

Soon, if the stars align for Gurriel, he will add a sixth country to the list: Canada.

Long before he defected, he had connections to Canada. A historic agreement between an independent Canadian team and the Cuban government allowed one of his brothers to play in Quebec. Serving as a translator in those negotiations was a former minor-league catcher who played for that Quebec club. Subsequently, the same translator would play a key role in bringing Gurriel to the Blue Jays.

The story of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and his zig-zag path out of Cuba is a tad complicated, and there were tense moments along the way, but no serious hitches. He was lucky.

Kendrys Morales had a much tougher time. Morales lacked Gurriel’s connections and family financial support. It took Morales eight tries before a boat finally took him and 18 others to Florida.

Gurriel, however, is paying a lot more in cash to pursue his dream.

He is paying his smugglers.

“It’s in the seven digits,” he says. “It’s in the millions.”

And it’s in installments. His specificity stops there. When pressed, he will say only that he considers it a fair price.

The Blue Jays are paying him $22-million over seven years. He has not yet played a professional game outside of Cuba. But his contract is guaranteed.

So are the payments to his smugglers, minus the paperwork.

The Blue Jays and Major League Baseball have nothing to do with that. Not directly, anyway.

***

The Blue Jays signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. this summer. The team is paying him $22-million over seven years. Photo by John Lott.

In early February a year ago, Lourdes Gurriel and his older brother, Yulieski – a longtime star in Cuba – sneaked across the border from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Their entry, through a secluded forest, was illegal. Their shadowy escorts guided them through every step to the freedom and wealth they could only imagine growing up in Cuba.

For years, the Gurriel sons had remained loyal. Over the previous decade, major-league clubs coveted Yulieski, and he knew it. But he stayed home.

And in 2015, as the U.S. and Cuban governments began to move tentatively toward rapprochement, he hoped he would become the first player to leave his homeland legally to play in the States.

But a year ago, Yulieski was approaching his 32nd birthday. He decided he could wait no longer. Lourdes Jr., then 22, had been playing professionally in Cuba since he was 16. He too was ready to leave.

They played their last game for Cuba in the Caribbean Series, held in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo in early February.

Earlier, they had made certain arrangements.

“Everything started in the Dominican,” Gurriel says. “We approached people and we told those people, ‘Listen, we would like to defect. Is that possible?’”

It’s possible, the people replied. Are you sure you want to do this?

Yes, we’re sure.

Then, the people replied, you must do everything that we say.

The family of Lourdes Sr., now living in Miami, paid the required up-front money. The remaining millions owed would come from the newly rich Gurriel brothers.

***

As he recounts his story in Spanish, Gurriel sits in an otherwise vacant meeting room across the hall from the Blue Jays’ spring-training clubhouse. Alongside is team translator Josue Peley, who also happens to be a friend of the Gurriel family. Peley’s translation skills have helped bring one Gurriel brother to Quebec, and now another to the Blue Jays.

The interview lasts an hour. Gurriel is relaxed and animated, his hands darting as he speaks, his upper body weaving like a boxer’s, his expressions by turn serious, side-eyed and jovial. He knows he is telling a good story and he is enjoying it. He smiles easily, and often laughs as he banters with Peley in Spanish.

Gurriel is relaxed and animated during his hour-long interview. Photo by John Lott.

But while they were far luckier than many other Cuban defectors, the Gurriel brothers’ flight to freedom was no joy ride. Gurriel’s tone turns solemn when he discusses the lead-up to his escape.

When a Cuban team leaves the country for a tournament, government officials have eyes on every player.

“We were under a lot of pressure,” he says. “We had people with us at all times to make sure we didn’t go anywhere. In Cuba, people try to leave the team to follow their dreams. They knew we were trying to leave.”

How did they know?

“They all want to leave,” he says.

Ultimately, that included the Gurriel boys, whose legacy, up until a year ago, was loyalty and patience.

Their father, who passed on his name to Lourdes, is the Babe Ruth of baseball in Cuba. He was a famous slugger, then a longtime coach of the national team. He took that team all over the world. His three sons became stars too.

As a result, the Cuban government rewarded the family. By Cuban standards, the Gurriels were well-to-do. The boys grew up in a nice house, in contrast to the poverty endured by so many in Cuba.

“The Cuban government knew how loyal my dad was,” Gurriel says. “He’s a legend over there. Not only my dad, but my brother (Yulieski). Since he was 21, my brother got so many offers from big-league clubs, and he never left.”

Last summer, Yulieski quickly became a starting infielder for the Houston Astros, who are paying him $47.5-million over five years. Lourdes Jr. says he realizes he must be more patient, but after receiving an invitation to big-league camp, he can feel his big-league dream edging closer to reality.

***

Gurriel comes from Cuban baseball royalty. Photo by John Lott.

During their flight from Cuba, Gurriel and his big brother had some anxious moments. Especially in Haiti.

Which, ironically, is where they made a new, if odd, Canadian connection.

Their smugglers took the brothers to a house on a beach somewhere in Haiti, where they stayed for approximately a month, while certain other arrangements were made. Gurriel’s understanding of those arrangements is vague. His smugglers kept them in the dark.

The brothers could not leave the house, except for occasional brief visits to the beach. Gurriel says they were prisoners. He accepts that it was for their own good.

Asked how that month felt, he replies, “Super difícil.”

“It’s really, really hard,” he says. “You know you’re in Haiti but you don’t know where and you have no idea of what’s going to happen. Zero. No idea at all. We didn’t have contact with anyone.”

But their handlers had agreed to one condition.

“That was one of our rules, my brother and I, to at least have a TV with video games and movies,” he says.

What did you watch on TV?

“Netflix!” he says with a laugh.

One of their favourite series was Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Much of the series was shot in Vancouver.

And in retrospect, Gurriel says with a grin, “it was funny because the main character was Canadian.”

That would be Toronto-born actor and ardent sports fan Stephen Amell, who in 2015 used his celebrity to spearhead a campaign to get out the all-star vote for Blue Jays’ third baseman Josh Donaldson.

But that was long before Lourdes Gurriel Jr. started to think of himself as a Blue Jay. First, he had some traveling to do.

***

Gurriel said the Blue Jays were his favoured organization to sign with. Photo by John Lott.

To qualify for free agency under Major League Baseball rules, a Cuban defector must first establish legal residency in another country. If he is younger than 23, his potential cash windfall is limited by the cash pool MLB assigns each club for international signings.

But after age 23, he truly becomes a free agent and his contract details fall outside a team’s international pool limit.

Gurriel was 22 when he left Cuba. He would turn 23 on Oct. 19. He would work out, showcase his talents for big-league scouts, let negotiations begin and wait for his birthday to pass.

MLB’s policy has enticed many of Cuba’s brightest stars off the island and made some players and smugglers very rich. Rightly, critics call it human trafficking. There have been cases – Yasiel Puig’s and Leonys Martin’s are perhaps the most infamous –where the smugglers’ price has gone up mid-trip. Players have been kidnapped and terrorized, and their families threatened. In some cases, organized crime figures are involved.

MLB’s official stance on this matter is condemnation. But while MLB and club owners prefer an international draft to keep costs down, teams continue to benefit from the status quo – the bidding wars that break out after such players as Aroldis Chapman, Jose Abreu, Puig and the Gurriels establish residency outside the U.S.

And occasionally, a smuggler gets caught, which is how Abreu became a star witness in a Miami courtroom last week.

MLB says it hopes the easing of diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Cuba can lead to a formal agreement whereby Cuban players can legally leave the island. Talks started last year. Should that process eventually put Cuban stars in an international draft, their signing bonuses would plummet in comparison to the free-agent deals enjoyed by the most prominent defectors.

That undoubtedly was on the minds of the Gurriel brothers when they chose to defect. Their window for a windfall was closing. Yulieski was already past 30. Lourdes was young, but a hint of change was in the wind. And they would find comfort in their company.

After watching Netflix for about a month, and after certain arrangements were made, their smugglers sent them to Haitian officials to complete their applications for residency. Once that was in place, they went to the American consulate and were approved for temporary visas to the U.S. There were trips to Miami, where their parents were now living and where they could find good places to work out.

Then it was back to Haiti to wait. Since Haiti – their official residence – lacked workout facilities, and the brothers were impatient to showcase their talents for MLB clubs, they moved to Panama, where they trained and eventually staged workouts for MLB scouts.

Meanwhile, Gurriel twice returned to the American consulate in Haiti to renew his U.S. visa.

“My friends and family were saying, ‘You’re getting risky. Who gets two visas in two months to get into the States?’ I said, ‘No, it’s fine. They even knew me in Haiti. It was like, ‘Hey man, you’re back.” And they did my paperwork so I could go.”

For Lourdes’ big workout in Panama, he thought every team sent scouts except the Blue Jays. He was wrong.

“There were well over 100 scouts there,” says Blue Jays’ vice-president Andrew Tinnish, “and we were there too.”

Tinnish liked what he saw. This spring in Dunedin, he says, he likes what he’s seeing even more.

And for reasons he cannot quite explain, Gurriel had developed a bit of a soft spot for the Blue Jays.

Perhaps it started with a T-shirt.

***

Gurriel has played shortstop, second and third as well as the outfield. Photo by John Lott.

Somewhere in the Gurriel family archives is a photo of Lourdes Jr. wearing a Jose Bautista T-shirt. It did not inspire instant devotion, but he admits it might have planted a seed.

“I liked the Blue Jays,” he says. “Nothing special, but I saw them on TV. Two years ago, I have a picture of me with a Jose Bautista T-shirt on. So I liked them a little bit.’

After the Panama showcase, Gurriel says, the Blue Jays were high on his list, even though he thought they had not seen his workout. But he says his agent had not even heard from them.

The Jays, however, had scouted Gurriel in international tournaments at least six times before the Panama showcase. They had video of him. And they knew he had batted .344 with a .967 OPS in his last season in Cuba.

Their conclusion: Guirriel is lean (6-foot-2, 185 pounds) and raw, but with potential to be what Tinnish described as “a solid, everyday major-league player.”

His swing is compact. He is a gap hitter who should show greater power potential as his body fills out. He runs well. He has played shortstop, second and third as well as the outfield.

At the Panama showcase, Gurriel focused on hitting line drives early in his batting practice, then began to hit long balls in Rod Carew Stadium, which Tinnish called “massive.”

“It wasn’t an unbelievable look,” Tinnish says. “It was a good, solid look. The other thing that struck me was the way he interacted with the young players around him. It was really impressive. Here he is, 22 years old, and he had kids 15 to 18 working out with him, and you just got the feeling that he was a good teammate. A kid made a nice defensive play and he was excited. A kid has a nice round of BP and he was fist-pumping him. You could see it was pretty genuine.”

A private workout for the Blue Jays was set up in Miami. But the day before, Gurriel fouled a ball off his ankle. He was despondent. They had to cancel the workout.

But the Jays agreed to a meeting anyway. It left both sides feeling buoyant.

Tinnish and Dana Brown, a special assistant to general manager Ross Atkins, represented the Blue Jays, along with area scout Matt O’Brien and video co-ordinator Brandon Bishoff. Josue Peley, just finishing his first year as the team’s official translator, served as intermediary.

“I was translating the whole time. It was rock and roll that day,” Peley recalls.

Tinnish: “It really clicked in when we met with Lourdes in Miami. His father was there as well. You could see where he gets a lot of his character and his discipline and love of the game.”

Gurriel: “I was ready for that meeting because I did a lot of them with other teams. I really felt like I was wanted. They asked questions that other teams didn’t ask. I felt like they really wanted to get into me. And it was easier because I was talking to Josue. I knew everything I said was going to translated accurately. I trusted him.”

Gurriel with Blue Jays translator Josue Peley (left). Photo by John Lott.

Indeed, Tinnish says that was evident when the two sides first met at a Miami hotel. Gurriel and Peley immediately embraced. Negotiations don’t usually start that way.

That trust took root three years ago when Peley was catching for the Quebec Capitales in the independent Can-Am League. Born in Venezuela and raised in Montreal, Peley handled the translation when the Capitales met with Cuban officials to arrange permission for a Cuban player to join the Quebec team in 2014. After the season, he was part of the negotiations to bring four Cuban players to the Capitales in 2015.

One was the middle Gurriel brother, Yuniesky. While in Cuba, Peley twice stayed at the Gurriels’ home. Back home in Quebec, he became Yuniesky’s teammate.

This spring, his locker is a few feet away from the youngest brother’s.

“When we hired Josue last year, it had nothing to do with whether or not someday we could sign a Gurriel brother,” Tinnish says. “It was about hiring a talented guy who’s trilingual, who’s Canadian, who we have great makeup reports on from a guy who I really trust a lot, (team president) Michel Laplante with the Capitales. Michel raves about him. It’s worked out really well. So there’s no question that Josue was definitely a factor in this.”

***

The Jays won’t say where Gurriel will make his pro debut, but it won’t be in the majors. Photo by John Lott.

Gurriel says the Cardinals started the bidding at $18-million. In the end, Toronto and St. Louis made similar offers, but all along, he says he leaned toward the Blue Jays.

His father and brother counseled caution, urging him to learn more about the organization, the city and his chances to advance through the system. Ultimately, everyone agreed.

“It was a family decision,” Gurriel says.

His deal pays him $22-million over seven years, with $3-million up front. If Gurriel can make a relatively quick trip to the majors and stick, it will be a bargain for the Jays.

Tinnish is careful to strike a cautious tone when he discusses Gurriel. This is not a can’t-miss prospect. He is a year removed from competition. He is adapting to a new culture and struggling to learn English.

But the raw talent and the pedigree are unmistakable.

“Obviously, you need to have skills,” Tinnish says. “But if you have the makings of good footwork, good hands, and you’re athletic and you have good makeup, then you’ve got a chance.”

Pollyannas in the fan base greeted Gurriel’s signing with speculation that he could be playing left field at the Rogers Centre by mid-season. He was primarily an outfielder during his last season in Cuba, but his favourite spot is shortstop. That’s where he has been working out in Dunedin.

“Where is he going to play long-term? I don’t know,” Tinnish says. “Time will tell. But I think for now, you play him at short. You probably move him around a little bit so he’s comfortable in other spots.”

The Jays won’t say where he will make his pro debut, but it won’t be in the majors. Meanwhile, Gurriel is prepared to stay patient.

“Since I was really young, my dream was to play in the big leagues,” he says. “I don’t know where I’m going to start. I don’t know where I’m going to finish. First of all, I’ve got to show them that I can play here in spring training. If it’s not this year, then it will be next year or the year after, but my main goal is to play in the big leagues as soon as possible.”

The entire Gurriel family now lives in a big house in Miami. Yuliseki and Lourdes paid for it.

Meanwhile, they’re paying their smugglers too.