After but two iron tests in Beijing’s Wukesong Main Field, Antonio Pacheco’s current lineup looks every bit as formidable as any of the successful Cuban Olympic squads of past years skippered by Fuentes (Barcelona and Atlanta), Borges (Sydney), or Vélez (Athens). This group has hit, defended, and pitched like champions at all the decisive moments, and done so against two of the toughest teams in this year’s stacked Olympic field. Pacheco himself was quick to acknowledge with his post-game comments last evening (after the opener versus Japan) that his team was finally showing some of its famed offense in the wake of a disappointingly slow summer exhibition schedule. The normally tight-lipped manager was also quick to stress, however, that there was still much room for improvement, since some of his hitters were still swinging wildly, instead of taking more disciplined and controlled cuts aimed at merely making contact with often hittable pitches. Although Pacheco pointed no fingers, Alexei Bell—who despite his opening night double and triple has also gone down swinging with runners in scoring position on several clutch occasions—might seem a strong candidate for such thinly veiled criticism.

One Cuban hitter, however, whose offensive game has so far been beyond a shadow of criticism is the impressive Alfredo Despaigne. Granma’s rare gift to Team Cuba today followed his opening night heroics (three hits and three crucial RBIs) with a dramatic two-run game-saving blast that kayoed an opportunistic Canadian squad bent on one of the week’s earliest and biggest upsets. In only eight plate appearances to date Despaigne has now smashed four hits, knocked in five of Cuba’s 11 total runs, drawn an intentional pass in the bargin, and thus single-handedly ended further debate about the wisdom of leaving Urrutia and Peraza on the sidelines as potential DH candidates. The powerful young right-handed basher has not only made the Cuban technical commission and its chief, Higinio Vélez, look much better than some skeptics might wish to admit, but he has also given managers rival Senichi Hoshino and Terry Puhl (to say nothing of Davy Johnson) a major new wrinkle to fret over when facing a very balanced and potent Cuban lineup.

Alfredo Despaigne hit a two-run homer in the 6th inning to beat Canada 7-6 Wednesday night on Beijing.

Despaigne (pronounced “Deh-SPAIN”) has been the most notable, perhaps, but not the only hot cannon in a revived Cuban attack. If the Cuban hitting has been still somewhat muted so far, at least it has been timely. Twice Canada charged into a lead in today’s game on the strength of a pair of ringing home runs off the sizzling bat of Nick Weglarz. The first Weglarz round-tripper was a mammoth solo shot reaching the top of the center field flag pole in the fourth to tie the game at three apiece. The second homer was a two-run blast with Scott Thorman aboard in the sixth that opened a 5-3 cushion. Both long blows came off shaky starter Adiel Palma, who also gave up a third homer to Mike Saunders in the top of the third. But Cuba—in the fashion they have “trademarked” over the years—struck back with a pair of game-deciding long balls of their own when both Alex Malleta and Despaigne unloaded two-run “batacazos” in the bottom of the sixth frame. The storyline from that point on was some clutch relief pitching on the part of closer reliable Norberto González. González was just as mesmerizing against Canada’s former and future big leaguers today as Pedro Lazo was yesterday while slamming the door versus Japanese league veterans.

Yesterday his writer had leveled some mild criticism at Team Canada skipper Terry Puhl, whose earlier comments suggest that, in Puhl’s mind, Cuba did not merit the “great team” label that is so often been thrown its way. Today’s game seemed to score a point for both this my own view as well as Puhl’s. The match did indeed prove to be the pitched battle and old-fashioned “dogfight” that manager Puhl had predicted it would indeed be. At the same time, there was no better demonstration of Cuba’s Olympic-venue “great team” status than the one unfolded last night on Beijing’s Wukesong Main Field. Great teams in these international events are the ones who take advantage of every break handed them, stage miraculous late-inning rallies in the most crucial games and precisely when they are most needed, and at the same time finds ways time and again to protect slim margins of victory during the final tense innings of the most pressure-packed matches. The récord speaks for itself here. Cuba has now (as of today) played 38 contests in Olympic Baseball history and won exactly 35 of them. On only one single occasion (against Ben Sheets in the Sydney Gold Medal showdown) has a Cuban team failed to deliver desired victory in the final innings of an Olympic medal round game (that is, in a game that truly mattered). I challenge manager Puhl, or anyone else for that matter, to show me an equal or even an approximate récord of greatness found anywhere in the entire history of baseball—at any level, amateur or professional, or in any era, modern or ancient.

Day Two action featured some other indications that nothing was going to be very easy for the contenders here in Beijing. Team USA cruised past fast-fading Netherlands 7-0 in a lopsided match that was shortened to eight frames by Thursday morning rain showers. Victory number one for the Americans featured an impressive one-hit, seven-inning pitching stint by Steven Strasburg, the only non-pro in the American camp. The San Diego State freshman hurled 4.1 perfect innings out of the gate, striking out eight of the first thirteen before yielding a walk to Sydney de Jong in the fifth. The only blemish on Strasburg’s magic evening was a harmless seventh inning single from Sharnol Adriana, while his 11 total strikeouts where the third highest mark in Team USA Olympic history.

While the Americans were getting back on track, the other contenders (including Cuba) were all sweating out uncomfortable wins or tasting bitter defeat. Taiwan and Canada both fell from the unbeaten ranks, while Japan found its first victory (6-1 over Chinese Taipei) anything but a calk walk. And Korea now has to credit its own remaining spot in the ranks of the unbeaten more to stormy weather than to any second day heroics of its own. The Koreans were deadlocked in an eighth-inning 0-0 match with underdog China when rain washed out the tense proceedings. (The game will be replayed in its entirety at a latter date next week.) Japan led by only the slimmest of margins (2-1) into the ninth, where a four-run uprising made the victory for manager Hoshino and company look far more one-sided than it actually was. The vaunted Japanese professionals have so far been largely shut down on the offensive side of their game by both first Cuba and then Taiwan, scratching out single tallies in only four of their first 17 innings at bat. Korea’s offensive outbursts an evening earlier against favored Team USA were also a distant memory yesterday against the less celebrated but still gritty Chinese.

Up next on Day Three is the single contest that always seemingly grabs the top billing in these Olympic and international venues. Cuba takes on Team USA tomorrow morning (11:30 pm EST Thursday night) in a shootout that will probably be viewed more for bragging rights that for anything else. Both clubs are seemingly headed for medal round play barring some unforeseen disaster of extraordinary dimensions; both would like have to lose three out of their last four not to make the championship playoffs. But for the North American press this always appears to be the only Olympic venue collision that is worth any ink or air time, since stateside baseball writers know little else about what is actually going on inside the international version of their sport, and since all the old trite clichés about the forces of pure democracy battling the evil soldiers of Fidel’s communist state still seemingly prove just too irresistible to let go of. Every USA-Cuba baseball clash—for members of the stateside press at least—is taken by knee-jerk reaction as being Uncle Sam versus Tio Fidel and rarely are any true baseball issues ever involved here. It’s the political hype that sells, and any good sports storylines (like the intriguing rematch of programs that squared off in the finales of both last fall’s World Cup and the previous year’s Americas Region Olympic Qualifier) might as well be damned.

A sufficient example of the cavalier and stereotypical treatment of Cuba-USA baseball match-ups by provincial North American baseball writers can be culled from the Bill Conlon Philadelphia Inquirer article cited in yesterday’s report. After dismissing this year’s Olympic baseball matches out of hand as being without any apparent spectator interest, Conlon’s waxes nostalgic about the memorable end of Cuba’s early Olympic domination in Sydney, which he sees as resulting from a mixture of rule adjustments (the outlawing of Cuba’s “aluminum bat” advantage) and Tom Lasorda’s managerial magic. Conlon contends: “Once the aluminum bats were replaced by wood, the Cubans had to play more of a small-ball style. It does not suit them. Their poor fundamentals, in almost every phase, were exposed. With the three-run mentality replaced by actual strategy, they lacked team speed and their outfield arms were weak. Lasorda simply forced the tempo at every opportunity and let the Cubans self-destruct.”

This lame analysis underscores the fact that Conlon and the bulk of his like-minded colleagues simply haven’t watched the Cubans over the years in anything but a handful of games versus Team USA. Most USA journalist stumbling occasionally on international baseball likely don’t watch Team USA either, for that matter, except maybe a handful of times versus the Cubans. The bottom lines here are the following: first, Tom Lasorda’s “strategy” had nothing to do with Cuba’s rare loss in Sydney (other than his decision to hand the ball to Ben Sheets, who went out and pitched the game of his life.) Second, the Cubans have for decades relied precisely upon a “small ball” style in international matches and this was as evident in Amateur World Series and Intercontinental Cup matches of the 1970s and 1980s as it was lately in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. What Conlon calls the “three run mentality” has always been far more a staple of American pros playing in international tournaments (remember the “Dream Team” USA squad in the WBC, for example) than of any Cuba squads or Asian squads. The hasty judgments by Conlon and others who base their assessment of the Cuban game on one or two quick glimpses each decade can lead to nothing but some very fuzzy analyses.

In reality this should be an exciting match that will once again measure the top Cuban Leaguers against the yardstick of top big league prospects. Davy Johnson has tabbed Texas League (AA) Oakland farmhand Trevor Cahill (a right-hander) as his starter for the game which will also carry the added storyline of a rematch between the 2000 Sydney and 2007 World Cup finalist. Of course this is only a nominal “rematch” since the American personnel (outside of skipper Johnson, who was on hand in Taiwan last November) has changed entirely, even if the Cubans feature a club with at least a few veterans (Cepeda, Paret, Pestano, Lazo and Palma) still on hand from Sydney and other recent face-offs. A USA victory would leave the rival teams with identical récords after only three games; a Cuba triumph might begin to raise the possible specter of a Cuban unbeaten run through pool play, since two of the three biggest hurdles (the other being Korea, of course) will already have been crossed. Cuban manager Antonio Pacheco has characteristically remained mum about a possible pitching choice, although either southpaw Elier Sánchez or National Series ERA champ Jonder Martínez might not be bad guesses.

Peter C. Bjarkman is the English-language columnist for www.baseballdecuba.com and is widely considered the leading historian of Cuba’s pre-revolution and post-revolution baseball. His award-winning books include A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006 (2007) and Smoke: The Romance and Lore of Cuban Baseball (1999, with Mark Rucker). He is currently completing work on two volumes—Baseball’s Other Big Red Machine: A History of the Cuban National Team and Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1962-2007—both scheduled for publication in 2008 by McFarland & Company.