Sylvia Lind makes La Esquina Caliente agency reality
The collage of pictures paints a vivid story, impressively highlighting Sylvia Lind’s journey through her beloved baseball world. The Latina who helped create the Futures and the Civil Rights games for Major League Baseball has devoted more than two decades of her professional life to America’s pastime, or shall we say, her parents’ native Cuba’s pastime.
Actually, the former Sylvia Galindo devoted much of her life to baseball long before she ever worked in MLB.
As a child, the Staten Island native dreamed of becoming general manager of the New York Mets. She was so obsessed with the Mets, she would calculate Hall of Famer Tom Seaver’s earned run average after every start.
Baseball’s only Latina baseball agent can still be found most nights during the regular season watching the Mets on television while tracking seven minor-league games on her laptop.
She initially attended Fordham University School of Law with plans on becoming a baseball agent. Before setting up her La Esquina Caliente agency, however, she had a 20-year detour in the commissioner’s office working on player development, baseball operations and legal issues.
Along the way, Lind, 52, developed hundreds of strong working relationships throughout all parts of the industry. The general manager of the Rockies Jeff Bridich was once her intern, and countless Latino baseball stars remember her fondly as the woman who spoke in their native language while briefing them during All-Star Weekend before they played in the Futures Game.
“When it’s somebody like her who has a lot of experience in baseball, I think it’s a very special thing,” said Twins legend Tony Oliva, who managed the World Team for Lind one year in the Futures Game. “A third of baseball players are Latinos, and I think a Latino of that quality who can represent us, I think that’s very good for Latinos.
“I think that she can represent not only Latinos but Americans too because she has a lot of experience.”
Lind’s parents, Rey and Tensy, left their native Cuba after Fidel Castro took over. Spanish was Lind’s first language growing up in Staten Island. Her Cuban accent is as pure as any you’d hear during a heated baseball debate in the famed La Esquina Caliente in Havana’s Parque Central.
Lind, who visited Cuba for the first time in 1999 when the Orioles played an exhibition game there, was around 12 years old when her father took her to Jersey City, N.J., to see an old timers game between members of Cuba’s former winter league teams Almendares and Havana.
She got on the field that afternoon and even met Giants ace Juan Marichal, the first native of the Dominican Republic inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I got to meet not only people that I knew about but also people that my parents would talk about,” Lind says.
Years later, Lind told Marichal that she had first met him as a child. Over the years Lind worked with or met many of baseball’s greatest figures.
Few people can say that they were granted audiences with Hall of Famer Henry Aaron and the late poet, author and Civil Rights icon Maya Angelou.
Lind can.
Even more impressively, perhaps, Lind was even asked to write a proposed acceptance for Angelou after MLB announced that they would honor Angelou with the 2014 MLB Beacon of Life Award at the 2014 Civil Rights Game in Houston.
Lind visited Angelou’s home shortly after the announcement.
“That was an incredible experience,” Lind said of meeting Angelou, who died a few days before the 2014 Civil Rights Game. “She was a treasure of a person.”
The self-professed workaholic left MLB in December 2014 after filing a gender discrimination lawsuit against her boss Frank Robinson. The suit was settled in 2016.
With contacts throughout the industry, Lind transitioned to a career as an agent.
She is doing the job she initially planned to pursue when she enrolled in law school.
“I didn’t do it then, but I wouldn’t be able to be the agent that I could be now then because I didn’t have that hardcore baseball knowledge that I have now,” she says. “I have friends throughout the game and a lot more of a stamp of legitimacy.
“When I meet players, especially younger players, high school and college kids as an adviser, me being a lawyer is down on the list.”
Players are more impressed by her vast experience throughout baseball operations and player development.
As a bilingual Latina who has seen how hard Latino ballplayers work to learn a new language and adjust to a new culture, she also has a special appreciation for the benefits of having a bilingual agent or adviser.
“One of the major reasons I wanted to become an agent was because to me it was so heart-wrenching to see a lot of these Latino players come to the United States,” she said. “People whose only language is English do not appreciate what a difficult language English is. …
“When you’re talking about putting your future in someone’s hands, how can you not communicate in the language you’re more comfortable with.”
Lind notes that comfort level with an agent is the biggest thing for a player when picking a representative. Baseball, as the cliche goes, is a game of failure, after all.
Players need an agent who can appreciate what they’re going through, somebody who can listen and communicate with them freely.
“I’m pretty much a workaholic and always doing something for, with (or) on behalf of my players,” she said.
“What I give them is a unique perspective – the understanding and caring of a woman, coupled with an incredible baseball IQ, a comprehensive baseball Rolodex and a lot of friends who are or were in uniform.”
“Also (it’s) particularly important to me to give Spanish-speaking players a higher comfort level with someone who has so much influence on their lives.”
After only 2 ½ years as an agent, Lind is now working with 14 players. Seven of those players are in the minors. Two are playing in independent leagues. The others are college or high school players eligible for the upcoming June draft.
Almost all of them have been referred to Lind by friends who had a relationship with Lind. Her photo album includes pictures with the likes of Cookie Rojas and Oliva. The diversity of her connections shines through with her stories about George Brett or her time as a Baseball Ops liaison for three World Baseball Classics with Team Mexico twice and Team Spain once.
Although the Futures Game is arguably her proudest accomplishment of her time in the commissioner’s office, she has tremendous street cred in the baseball industry with more than just Latino players.
Hall of Famer Barry Larkin has known Lind for two decades, so he wasn’t surprised to see her become an agent.
“It makes sense based on her knowledge and what she’s done,” Larkin said. “It would be great for whoever had an opportunity to work with her because of her knowledge of the game, her experience and her connections in the game.”
Featured Image: Courtesy Sylvia Lind
Inset Images: Courtesy Sylvia Lind