MVN: Most Valuable Network

Freedom.

For anybody who was born and raised in the United States, freedom quite frankly is taken for granted. In which case, they should read the Bill of Rights again.

Freedom wasn't taken for granted when Pawtucket Red Sox pitcher Michael Tejera was growing up in Havana, Cuba for the simple reason that freedom only was a word found in a dictionary.

Freedom didn't, and still doesn't, exist under Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. But at the tender age of 17, Tejera made a life-altering decision.

He decided to defect to the United States, even though he still had a host of relatives living in Cuba.

In 1994, Tejera was pitching for the Cuban Junior National Team which was scheduled to play in the World Junior Championships in Canada after a stay in Connecticut to play exhibition games against college teams.

When the plane landed in Miami before continuing on to Connecticut, Tejera was reunited with an uncle who had lived there for 10 years and his uncle's wife who had lived there for three.

"I saw them but I didn't know anything about this country because in Cuba I didn't have any information," said Tejera, who signed a minor league free-agent contract with Boston on Jan. 4. "They started talking to me about all the good things that this country has, like all the freedom and all the opportunities.

"I listened to them and took their advice real well and made my decision to stay. What they told me made my decision easier."

In a sense, that was the easy part - making the decision. Then, there was the matter of the actual process of defecting with team officials in Miami International Airport.

"We were in a room for about three hours and my uncle was there," related Tejera. "He asked the players if anybody wanted anything and one of my friends said 'Yeah, I need to buy some stuff.' (My uncle) asked permission from the coach and the coach said 'No problem.'

"Then, my uncle said he'd like to take his nephew and the coach said 'No problem,' because it was right there in the airport."

After all, who would think of defecting in plain view of Cuban officials?

Michael Tejera would.

"By that time I already had made my decision and I told my uncle I was going to stay," said Tejera. "He called the immigration authorities. They came to me and asked me if I wanted to stay and I said 'Yes.'

"Then, they said, 'You won't have any problems. You're a free man.'"

In all honesty, Tejera didn't know how to react because the concept of being a free man was foreign in nature.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't know what those words meant because I never had that," explained Tejera. "I never had the opportunity to be a free man, to express myself and to do anything I wanted."

Obviously that was because the Communist regime in Cuba made those decisions for the people.

"They tell you what to do and what to say, and you have pressure on you all the time," said Tejera. "Just to get the opportunity to leave the country to play baseball and have the advantage that I had of having relatives in Miami was tremendous."

In Cuba, as Tejera related, athletes attend schools for sports.

"You have to attend a school to play whatever sport you want to play," he said. "But even though they give you some kind of scholarship, they have to know you and you have to be good (obviously, if you're not …..).

"You do have to study and have to make the grades in order to make the team. If you don't they don't let you make the team."

That might be the only benefit of attending a Cuban sports school.

Then, after Tejera defected, there was the matter of all the relatives he left behind and the possibility of reprisals from the Cuban government.

"I left everybody behind - my mother, father, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, uncles - my life," he exclaimed.

"Fortunately, (the government) didn't do anything to my family which was good. The government can take things from your family. Fortunately they didn't. That was a good thing but I still have relatives in Cuba."

But not as many as he did 14 years ago because, two years later, his mother, father, sister and brother boarded a rickety boat for a trip to Miami where they hoped to join Michael.

"They took a crowded boat and it was risky," understated Tejera. "Every time you leave Cuba by boat you don't know if you're going to make it. It's a risky thing. But thank God they made it and we're together in Miami."

Tejera passed another milestone eight years ago, when after studying to gain his American citizenship, he completed the naturalization process.

"I was real happy to become a citizen of the United States because this is the country that gave me all the opportunities I was looking for," he said. "They made me a free person. Every human being in the world should have that right --- to be free.

"This country gave me that opportunity and I appreciated it."

Tejera graduated from Miami Southwest High School and eventually was drafted by the Florida Marlins in 1995.

That was the beginning of what's become a 12-year pro career - something that was completely unfathomable while he was in Cuba.

Even more unfathomable was the thought that he could eventually pitch for a team that won the World Series, which is what happened in 2003 when the Marlins beat the Yankees in seven games.

On that 2003 team, Tejera was a reliever who compiled a 3-4 record with two saves and a 4.67 ERA.

Altogether he's pitched in 111 major league games (27 as a starter) - a number that isn't as high as it could have been since he missed the 2000 season after undergoing surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow.

While Tejera's profile isn't as high as other Cubans who've defected, like El Duque and Jose Contreras, he knows what would happen if his native country ever eased restrictions about leaving.

"A lot of players that played with me in Cuba have the same talent as guys here who were first- or second-round picks," he said.

"But they couldn't do anything. You get to a point in Cuba and there's a limit. Some of those guys had a lot of talent but they chose to make a living out of baseball because they had to support their families.

"If one day they open the country, you're going to see a lot of Cubans playing major league baseball just like you see guys from the Dominican and Venezuela. It's their goal. In Cuba, baseball is the No. 1 sport."

While personal freedom doesn't exist.