2022 White Sox Prospect Notes
Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2022 11:03 am
How Jairo Pomares escaped Cuba and is becoming the Giants’ next great hitting prospect
By Andrew Baggarly Mar 8, 2022
PHOENIX — Jairo Pomares jogged from the clubhouse to the hitting tunnel at the Giants’ new $70 million minor-league complex. Something jangling around his neck caught a glinting reflection in the Arizona sunshine.
It was a gold medallion. It was a gift from his mother, Yaremis. It depicts Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre — the icon of Our Lady of Charity, a 16-inch statuette with an ornate halo and flowing robes that is enshrined in a minor basilica in the Cuban mining town of El Cobre.
Just as the Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural touchstone throughout Mexico, the ancient icon colloquially known as La Cachita has become a national symbol for the Cuban people.
According to the 400-year-old legend, three men of modest means were making a salt run off the Cuban coast when their small boat encountered a storm. As they listed and lashed in the waves, they prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary for her protection. The skies cleared and as they surveyed the smooth ocean surface, they miraculously spotted a clay statue of Mary, dry and unstained by saltwater, floating on a scrap of wood. It instantly became a venerated icon, and in 1916, the Catholic church declared Our Lady of El Cobre the Patroness of Cuba.
Most images of La Cachita depict a banner above her halo with the Latin words, Mater Caritatis Fluctibus Maris Ambulavit, or, “Mother of Charity who walked on the road of stormy seas.” As Pope Francis stated when he visited Cuba in 2015, La Cachita “has accompanied the history of the Cuban people, sustaining the hope which preserves people’s dignity in the most difficult situations and championing the promotion of all that gives dignity to the human person. The growing devotion to the Virgin is a visible testimony of her presence in the soul of the Cuban people.”
Pomares, one of the most talented hitters in the Giants’ minor-league system, does not tuck the medallion into his jersey when he takes the field. It did not catch the sun by accident.
“I want to represent my island,” the 21-year-old outfielder said through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros. “That’s what I’m working for. It would be an honor to represent my country as a Giant.”
His presence here, through so many difficulties and dangers, is a visible testimony in its own right.
Pomares was an up-and-coming talent from the colonial-era city of Trinidad who had played on Cuba’s under-15 national team when he and his family began to consider taking a life-altering risk in 2016. He could have stayed and finished his degree from EIDE Lino Salabarría Pupo — one of Cuba’s top educational and sports institutes, which also produced Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel. But he learned that a highly regarded member of Cuba’s under-18 national team, Andy Pages, had arranged to be smuggled out of the country. The traffickers were talked into taking Pomares, too, once they became convinced he also might command a six-figure signing bonus.
So Pages and Pomares prayed for their own deliverance. They began a precarious path across four international borders, beginning with a legal flight to Guyana — one of the few countries where Cuban citizens are permitted to enter without a visa. From there, they took an off-the-books flight to Curaçao. They hid out there for three days with people they did not know, then used falsified documents to fly to Haiti. After a week in another stranger’s safe house, they made an illegal land crossing into the Dominican Republic, where they could establish residency.
All the while, Pomares trusted that there would be clear skies ahead. And while he declined to say how much of his signing bonus he had promised to his traffickers, or what, if any, percentage of his future earnings he pledged to them, he considers himself fortunate that he wasn’t detained or harmed at any point.
“I had to leave my family, go to Haiti and stay with people I didn’t know,” he said. “That wasn’t easy. But at the same time, it’s a relief when it’s over.”
Giants international scouting director Joe Salermo couldn’t remember which tournament he was attending the first time he saw Pomares swing a bat. But he knew it was for Cuba’s under-15 team. And he knew it was a swing he’d follow every chance he got.
“He wasn’t the star but he was always an above-average player,” Salermo said. “The skills were there. You just had to watch.”
The Giants continued to track Pomares after he established himself in the Dominican. A year after he arrived in the country, his parents left their hotel housekeeping jobs in Cuba behind, and along with Jairo’s younger brother, Dairon, they successfully made their own escape to join him. His father, Jordani, embraced a new career. He became a full-time batting practice pitcher to his sons.
Pomares continued to gain strength and hone his bat-to-ball skills in the Dominican, and as the Giants prepared to make a sizable ripple in the international market again in 2018, they made signing him a priority. Salermo was encouraged that the reports on Pomares kept getting better and better. Beyond that, Salermo had made inroads with the family.
“Getting to know him, getting to know his parents, that made us really go after Jairo,” said Salermo, whose own family escaped Cuba when he was 11. “Being Cuban, I understand this: You’ve seen some flashy Cuban players at the big-league level. That’s just an expression of confidence in the way they approach the game. Jairo is like that, too. But it’s a quiet confidence. It has to do with the way he was brought up and educated.
“I’m not sure I’d describe it as one of the good things about communism, but they pour money into social programs, into sports education. It’s well organized. The skills you can obtain at a young age are incredible.”
Salermo knows this because he also was enrolled in a sports academy before he left Cuba. He was training to become a chess prodigy. He still sets up a board whenever he gets a chance.
He knew that signing Pomares would be a move the Giants wouldn’t regret. But first, they had to wait for Major League Baseball to certify him.
The league certified Pages in 2017 and the power-hitting outfielder signed for $300,000 with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the most the club could offer an international player as a consequence for exceeding their bonus pool in past seasons. The Giants were under an identical bonus restraint during that signing period, so it worked to their great fortune that Pomares wasn’t certified until 2018. Although he was 18 by then, he had become one of the best pure hitters available in his international class. The only reason his signing for $975,000 didn’t attract more attention at the time was because the Giants’ class was headlined by top-ranked shortstop Marco Luciano, who received $2.6 million. They signed head-turning Venezuelan outfielder Luis Matos for $750,000 in that class, too.
It has the potential to become the Giants’ greatest haul of international talent since Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda.
It was July 6 of last season and the late-afternoon shadows stretched across the infield in San Jose when Pomares batted against the Fresno Grizzlies in the first inning. He took a measured, left-handed swing, stayed with the outside pitch and drove a home run the opposite way. In his next at-bat, he flared a single to left field. Then he yanked an inside pitch for a double down the right-field line. He finished the night with a line single that nearly took off the pitcher’s head.
The next afternoon, Pomares laced a breaking ball to left field for a single in his first at-bat. He drilled a no-doubt home run to right-center to which the Fresno outfielders reacted with a perfunctory jog. He hit a ground-ball single past the second baseman. He went with the pitch again and barreled a fastball off the left-field fence for a double.
“Oh, we had fun with it. We enjoyed it,” Matos said. “As teammates, we were all happy for him. When he goes to an at-bat, we all expect he’s going to hit. He just makes it seem so easy.
“He’s a ballplayer who was born to hit.”
Luciano is one of the most hyped prospects in baseball, a potential 40-home run hitter in the major leagues, and he destroyed pitching in the Low-A West for San Jose last season. Matos is a consensus top-100 prospect whose contact skills and overall game draw raves from scouts and executives.
But if you really want to see a Giants coach or scout make a face, mention Pomares to them. His teammates qualify, too.
“Oh man,” left-handed pitching prospect Chris Wright said. “I played with him in the Arizona (Rookie) League in 2019 and he was hitting line drives all around the field. But now? His power is impressive. His bat-to-ball skills are so impressive. He has an impressive approach for such a young guy. So yep. He’s … yeah. He’s a force to be reckoned with.”
Because of a strained muscle in his lower back last season sustained in spring training, Pomares was brought along slowly in extended spring and he didn’t join San Jose until mid-June. He proceeded to hit .372/.429/.694 with 14 home runs in 199 plate appearances for the Giants. He made a quicker adjustment than Luciano when both were promoted to High-A Eugene, hitting .262 with six home runs in 103 plate appearances. He also drew just one walk against 33 strikeouts.
Pomares never went more than two games without a hit, but it’s the power that most surprised Giants officials and coaches, who point out that the left-handed-hitting 21-year-old also led all players in extended spring with six homers.
Baseball America named him the Giants’ minor-league player of the year.
“Ever since I was little, it seems like hitting has come very easy to me,” Pomares said. “I don’t know if I was born to hit. However, in 2019 I noticed my swing was a little too level. Then during the pandemic, I realized that maybe I should change my approach a little and lift the bat to hit a few more home runs. So I think that helped. And then my conditioning, getting myself stronger — that’s what I’ve been working on.
“However, when I go to bat, I really don’t think too much. During batting practice, you go through your drills and think about what you’re going to do. But during the game, I think I’m better off reacting.
“The only thing that I had a problem with was the high fastball. That’s about it.”
And what about ocho por ocho? Were teammates fanning him with towels in the dugout?
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. It wasn’t until my teammates told me, ‘Hey, you’re 8-for-8. The record is 10.’ So when I started thinking about it, that’s when I made an out.”
Here is another thought exercise: of Luciano, Matos and Pomares, who profiles as the best overall hitter?
“Ohhh,” Pomares said. “It’s hard to choose. When it comes to power, I think Luciano. But Matos is a good, good hitter. It doesn’t matter where the ball is. When he makes contact, he’ll hit it right back up the middle. Me? … I’ll stay out of it.”
Salermo laughs at the question.
“First of all, can we just say it’s a nice problem to have?” he said. “Three guys in the same class with all these tools and skills, it’s a nice problem, right? If I have to compare, I’d say Pomares is more like Matos than Luciano. But Pomares has the best baseball skills out of all of them. He knows how to play the game. His aptitude and the way he sees the game is probably the most advanced.”
Pomares is behind in terms of professional experience, but he’s a .330 hitter in 128 games over four levels. With a bit more zone awareness, a scouting comp to a hitter like Houston’s Michael Brantley isn’t out of the question.
“Jairo is going to profile as an offensive guy wherever you put him, and I still give him a chance to play center field, too,” Salermo said. “He’s aggressive and he’ll have to calm down the first-pitch swinging as he moves up. But he’s a middle-of-the-order bat and a special one.”
In December 2018, more than two years after Pomares was trafficked out of Cuba and just a few months after he signed with the Giants, Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation announced an agreement that would allow Cuban players to sign contracts with MLB teams without defecting and establishing residency in another country. The agreement was lauded as a solution to address the dangerous influence of illegal traffickers.
“Words cannot fully express my heartfelt joy,” Chicago White Sox All-Star first baseman José Abreu said in a statement. “Dealing with the exploitation of smugglers and unscrupulous agencies will finally come to an end for the Cuban baseball player. To this date, I am still harassed.”
The agreement never came into force. The Trump administration, in its efforts to undo nearly all the bridge-building that the Obama administration had made toward reestablishing Cuban relations, effectively scuttled the agreement.
So the trafficking continues. Just a few months ago, 12 members of Cuba’s under-23 team — nearly half the roster — defected while playing a tournament in Mexico. It was the largest desertion in Cuban baseball history.
Other loopholes are closing, though. Last year, officials in Guyana ramped up efforts to require visas for Cuban travelers. And does this sound familiar? Last month, Dominican president Luis Abinader staged an inauguration ceremony and pushed a ceremonial button to begin pouring concrete into foundations of a wall that will straddle most of the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti.
If Pomares had not made his escape as a 16-year-old, it’s possible he could have been among the players who slipped away in Mexico last year. The same might have been true for Pages as well.
Instead, the two players who traveled together as teenagers in 2016 and were smuggled across four international borders might soon find themselves on opposite sides of one of baseball’s most heated rivalries.
Pages was nearly dealt to the Angels along with Joc Pederson in an earlier version of the Mookie Betts trade prior to the 2020 season, so the Dodgers have to be relieved that part of the deal was scuttled. Pages has become one of the best prospects in one of baseball’s most loaded systems. He led the High-A Central League last season with 31 home runs, 95 runs, 56 extra-base hits and a .945 OPS.
“Yes, we are playing for rival teams, but at the end of the day, Cuba is the one who wins,” Pomares said. “Because that’s what you want: to represent your country at the highest level and see what happens.”
In 1954, after Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he decided that the prize belonged to the Cuban people. His protagonist, the old fisherman, Santiago, prayed for the intercession of La Cachita. So the medal for Hemingway’s Nobel Prize is not kept in a museum or under palace guard. It’s adjacent to the shrine in the basilica in El Cobre.
Perhaps when the sun is angled just right, there are days when it catches the light.
https://theathletic.com/3169592/2022/03 ... ign=601983
By Andrew Baggarly Mar 8, 2022
PHOENIX — Jairo Pomares jogged from the clubhouse to the hitting tunnel at the Giants’ new $70 million minor-league complex. Something jangling around his neck caught a glinting reflection in the Arizona sunshine.
It was a gold medallion. It was a gift from his mother, Yaremis. It depicts Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre — the icon of Our Lady of Charity, a 16-inch statuette with an ornate halo and flowing robes that is enshrined in a minor basilica in the Cuban mining town of El Cobre.
Just as the Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural touchstone throughout Mexico, the ancient icon colloquially known as La Cachita has become a national symbol for the Cuban people.
According to the 400-year-old legend, three men of modest means were making a salt run off the Cuban coast when their small boat encountered a storm. As they listed and lashed in the waves, they prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary for her protection. The skies cleared and as they surveyed the smooth ocean surface, they miraculously spotted a clay statue of Mary, dry and unstained by saltwater, floating on a scrap of wood. It instantly became a venerated icon, and in 1916, the Catholic church declared Our Lady of El Cobre the Patroness of Cuba.
Most images of La Cachita depict a banner above her halo with the Latin words, Mater Caritatis Fluctibus Maris Ambulavit, or, “Mother of Charity who walked on the road of stormy seas.” As Pope Francis stated when he visited Cuba in 2015, La Cachita “has accompanied the history of the Cuban people, sustaining the hope which preserves people’s dignity in the most difficult situations and championing the promotion of all that gives dignity to the human person. The growing devotion to the Virgin is a visible testimony of her presence in the soul of the Cuban people.”
Pomares, one of the most talented hitters in the Giants’ minor-league system, does not tuck the medallion into his jersey when he takes the field. It did not catch the sun by accident.
“I want to represent my island,” the 21-year-old outfielder said through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros. “That’s what I’m working for. It would be an honor to represent my country as a Giant.”
His presence here, through so many difficulties and dangers, is a visible testimony in its own right.
Pomares was an up-and-coming talent from the colonial-era city of Trinidad who had played on Cuba’s under-15 national team when he and his family began to consider taking a life-altering risk in 2016. He could have stayed and finished his degree from EIDE Lino Salabarría Pupo — one of Cuba’s top educational and sports institutes, which also produced Houston Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel. But he learned that a highly regarded member of Cuba’s under-18 national team, Andy Pages, had arranged to be smuggled out of the country. The traffickers were talked into taking Pomares, too, once they became convinced he also might command a six-figure signing bonus.
So Pages and Pomares prayed for their own deliverance. They began a precarious path across four international borders, beginning with a legal flight to Guyana — one of the few countries where Cuban citizens are permitted to enter without a visa. From there, they took an off-the-books flight to Curaçao. They hid out there for three days with people they did not know, then used falsified documents to fly to Haiti. After a week in another stranger’s safe house, they made an illegal land crossing into the Dominican Republic, where they could establish residency.
All the while, Pomares trusted that there would be clear skies ahead. And while he declined to say how much of his signing bonus he had promised to his traffickers, or what, if any, percentage of his future earnings he pledged to them, he considers himself fortunate that he wasn’t detained or harmed at any point.
“I had to leave my family, go to Haiti and stay with people I didn’t know,” he said. “That wasn’t easy. But at the same time, it’s a relief when it’s over.”
Giants international scouting director Joe Salermo couldn’t remember which tournament he was attending the first time he saw Pomares swing a bat. But he knew it was for Cuba’s under-15 team. And he knew it was a swing he’d follow every chance he got.
“He wasn’t the star but he was always an above-average player,” Salermo said. “The skills were there. You just had to watch.”
The Giants continued to track Pomares after he established himself in the Dominican. A year after he arrived in the country, his parents left their hotel housekeeping jobs in Cuba behind, and along with Jairo’s younger brother, Dairon, they successfully made their own escape to join him. His father, Jordani, embraced a new career. He became a full-time batting practice pitcher to his sons.
Pomares continued to gain strength and hone his bat-to-ball skills in the Dominican, and as the Giants prepared to make a sizable ripple in the international market again in 2018, they made signing him a priority. Salermo was encouraged that the reports on Pomares kept getting better and better. Beyond that, Salermo had made inroads with the family.
“Getting to know him, getting to know his parents, that made us really go after Jairo,” said Salermo, whose own family escaped Cuba when he was 11. “Being Cuban, I understand this: You’ve seen some flashy Cuban players at the big-league level. That’s just an expression of confidence in the way they approach the game. Jairo is like that, too. But it’s a quiet confidence. It has to do with the way he was brought up and educated.
“I’m not sure I’d describe it as one of the good things about communism, but they pour money into social programs, into sports education. It’s well organized. The skills you can obtain at a young age are incredible.”
Salermo knows this because he also was enrolled in a sports academy before he left Cuba. He was training to become a chess prodigy. He still sets up a board whenever he gets a chance.
He knew that signing Pomares would be a move the Giants wouldn’t regret. But first, they had to wait for Major League Baseball to certify him.
The league certified Pages in 2017 and the power-hitting outfielder signed for $300,000 with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the most the club could offer an international player as a consequence for exceeding their bonus pool in past seasons. The Giants were under an identical bonus restraint during that signing period, so it worked to their great fortune that Pomares wasn’t certified until 2018. Although he was 18 by then, he had become one of the best pure hitters available in his international class. The only reason his signing for $975,000 didn’t attract more attention at the time was because the Giants’ class was headlined by top-ranked shortstop Marco Luciano, who received $2.6 million. They signed head-turning Venezuelan outfielder Luis Matos for $750,000 in that class, too.
It has the potential to become the Giants’ greatest haul of international talent since Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda.
It was July 6 of last season and the late-afternoon shadows stretched across the infield in San Jose when Pomares batted against the Fresno Grizzlies in the first inning. He took a measured, left-handed swing, stayed with the outside pitch and drove a home run the opposite way. In his next at-bat, he flared a single to left field. Then he yanked an inside pitch for a double down the right-field line. He finished the night with a line single that nearly took off the pitcher’s head.
The next afternoon, Pomares laced a breaking ball to left field for a single in his first at-bat. He drilled a no-doubt home run to right-center to which the Fresno outfielders reacted with a perfunctory jog. He hit a ground-ball single past the second baseman. He went with the pitch again and barreled a fastball off the left-field fence for a double.
“Oh, we had fun with it. We enjoyed it,” Matos said. “As teammates, we were all happy for him. When he goes to an at-bat, we all expect he’s going to hit. He just makes it seem so easy.
“He’s a ballplayer who was born to hit.”
Luciano is one of the most hyped prospects in baseball, a potential 40-home run hitter in the major leagues, and he destroyed pitching in the Low-A West for San Jose last season. Matos is a consensus top-100 prospect whose contact skills and overall game draw raves from scouts and executives.
But if you really want to see a Giants coach or scout make a face, mention Pomares to them. His teammates qualify, too.
“Oh man,” left-handed pitching prospect Chris Wright said. “I played with him in the Arizona (Rookie) League in 2019 and he was hitting line drives all around the field. But now? His power is impressive. His bat-to-ball skills are so impressive. He has an impressive approach for such a young guy. So yep. He’s … yeah. He’s a force to be reckoned with.”
Because of a strained muscle in his lower back last season sustained in spring training, Pomares was brought along slowly in extended spring and he didn’t join San Jose until mid-June. He proceeded to hit .372/.429/.694 with 14 home runs in 199 plate appearances for the Giants. He made a quicker adjustment than Luciano when both were promoted to High-A Eugene, hitting .262 with six home runs in 103 plate appearances. He also drew just one walk against 33 strikeouts.
Pomares never went more than two games without a hit, but it’s the power that most surprised Giants officials and coaches, who point out that the left-handed-hitting 21-year-old also led all players in extended spring with six homers.
Baseball America named him the Giants’ minor-league player of the year.
“Ever since I was little, it seems like hitting has come very easy to me,” Pomares said. “I don’t know if I was born to hit. However, in 2019 I noticed my swing was a little too level. Then during the pandemic, I realized that maybe I should change my approach a little and lift the bat to hit a few more home runs. So I think that helped. And then my conditioning, getting myself stronger — that’s what I’ve been working on.
“However, when I go to bat, I really don’t think too much. During batting practice, you go through your drills and think about what you’re going to do. But during the game, I think I’m better off reacting.
“The only thing that I had a problem with was the high fastball. That’s about it.”
And what about ocho por ocho? Were teammates fanning him with towels in the dugout?
“I wasn’t even aware of it,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. It wasn’t until my teammates told me, ‘Hey, you’re 8-for-8. The record is 10.’ So when I started thinking about it, that’s when I made an out.”
Here is another thought exercise: of Luciano, Matos and Pomares, who profiles as the best overall hitter?
“Ohhh,” Pomares said. “It’s hard to choose. When it comes to power, I think Luciano. But Matos is a good, good hitter. It doesn’t matter where the ball is. When he makes contact, he’ll hit it right back up the middle. Me? … I’ll stay out of it.”
Salermo laughs at the question.
“First of all, can we just say it’s a nice problem to have?” he said. “Three guys in the same class with all these tools and skills, it’s a nice problem, right? If I have to compare, I’d say Pomares is more like Matos than Luciano. But Pomares has the best baseball skills out of all of them. He knows how to play the game. His aptitude and the way he sees the game is probably the most advanced.”
Pomares is behind in terms of professional experience, but he’s a .330 hitter in 128 games over four levels. With a bit more zone awareness, a scouting comp to a hitter like Houston’s Michael Brantley isn’t out of the question.
“Jairo is going to profile as an offensive guy wherever you put him, and I still give him a chance to play center field, too,” Salermo said. “He’s aggressive and he’ll have to calm down the first-pitch swinging as he moves up. But he’s a middle-of-the-order bat and a special one.”
In December 2018, more than two years after Pomares was trafficked out of Cuba and just a few months after he signed with the Giants, Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation announced an agreement that would allow Cuban players to sign contracts with MLB teams without defecting and establishing residency in another country. The agreement was lauded as a solution to address the dangerous influence of illegal traffickers.
“Words cannot fully express my heartfelt joy,” Chicago White Sox All-Star first baseman José Abreu said in a statement. “Dealing with the exploitation of smugglers and unscrupulous agencies will finally come to an end for the Cuban baseball player. To this date, I am still harassed.”
The agreement never came into force. The Trump administration, in its efforts to undo nearly all the bridge-building that the Obama administration had made toward reestablishing Cuban relations, effectively scuttled the agreement.
So the trafficking continues. Just a few months ago, 12 members of Cuba’s under-23 team — nearly half the roster — defected while playing a tournament in Mexico. It was the largest desertion in Cuban baseball history.
Other loopholes are closing, though. Last year, officials in Guyana ramped up efforts to require visas for Cuban travelers. And does this sound familiar? Last month, Dominican president Luis Abinader staged an inauguration ceremony and pushed a ceremonial button to begin pouring concrete into foundations of a wall that will straddle most of the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti.
If Pomares had not made his escape as a 16-year-old, it’s possible he could have been among the players who slipped away in Mexico last year. The same might have been true for Pages as well.
Instead, the two players who traveled together as teenagers in 2016 and were smuggled across four international borders might soon find themselves on opposite sides of one of baseball’s most heated rivalries.
Pages was nearly dealt to the Angels along with Joc Pederson in an earlier version of the Mookie Betts trade prior to the 2020 season, so the Dodgers have to be relieved that part of the deal was scuttled. Pages has become one of the best prospects in one of baseball’s most loaded systems. He led the High-A Central League last season with 31 home runs, 95 runs, 56 extra-base hits and a .945 OPS.
“Yes, we are playing for rival teams, but at the end of the day, Cuba is the one who wins,” Pomares said. “Because that’s what you want: to represent your country at the highest level and see what happens.”
In 1954, after Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he decided that the prize belonged to the Cuban people. His protagonist, the old fisherman, Santiago, prayed for the intercession of La Cachita. So the medal for Hemingway’s Nobel Prize is not kept in a museum or under palace guard. It’s adjacent to the shrine in the basilica in El Cobre.
Perhaps when the sun is angled just right, there are days when it catches the light.
https://theathletic.com/3169592/2022/03 ... ign=601983
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