Boy that was, above all else, endlessly entertaining! Well, at least entertaining, if not anything close to endless, thanks mainly to a hair-brained IBAF rule destined to kill the possibilities of thrilling marathon extra-inning pitching duels. Just when you begin to think that the “one-loss-and-out” structure or the “all games are must wins” flavor of international Olympic-style baseball is about the most entertaining sporting spectacle ever invented, then they start proposing new ways to make such nail-biting experiences even more heart-rending. Enter IBAF president Harvey Schiller and his “why didn’t they think of this before” extra-innings free base runners rule. Both Thursday evening matches (Cuba-USA and China-Taiwan) were not only rife with the expected decades-old Cold War political symbolism. But both also invoked the dreaded tie-breaker “innovation” before peaking with equally bizarre jerry rigged conclusions. And both at the same time went a long way to uncovering all the flaws in the latest unnecessary Olympic tinkering schemes. There were admittedly also some unexpected thrills to be found along the way. And there was even a full dose of unsavory controversy (courtesy of sour-grapes USA manager Davey Johnson) just for good measure. If only celebrity-saturated major league baseball could be quite this much fun.

Cuba’s chance for revenge against the American rivals who rudely ended their 20-year World Cup reign last fall in Taiwan started off well enough. A quick first inning 2-0 advantage came via a Michel Enríquez RBI double and a hit batsman (Bell, plunked by USA righty Trevor Cahill) with the bases already loaded. Cuba’s surprise starter Luis Miguel Rodríquez turned in yeoman-like work for five frames before giving way to hardened veteran Pedro Lazo at the mid-point. The Americans eventually knotted the game in the bottom of the fourth on a pair of loud doubles (against Rodríquez) by Terry Tiffee and Nate Schierholtz, plus a looping single off the bat of John Gall which just eluded Freddie Cepeda near the left field foul line. Lazo then seemingly took the game over after the middle innings and Cuba seemed poised for another patented victory when Alfredo Despaigne played hero for the third straight day by crushing a booming homer in the top of the eighth. Jayson Nix answered with a blast of his own in the home half, however, and extra innings loomed on the horizon. Cuba almost closed the door on a “Schiller Rule” nightmare finish when Alexei Bell led off the top of the tenth with a resounding triple against the center field fence. But brilliant relief work by Jeremy Cummings (a pair of strikeouts and an infield roller) left Bell sitting wasted on third. Lazo also worked out of a mild threat in the bottom off the tenth when the Americans also stranded the potential game-winner at second base.

Michel Enriquez raises his arms celebrating his 11th inning two-run single that gave Cuba a 5-4 win over USA in their baseball preliminary game at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Next up was likely the most unusual inning ever witnessed during the long and storied saga of the Cuba-USA baseball rivalry. Pacheco opted for an obvious strategy also tested less than an hour earlier by both the Taiwanese and Chinese bench bosses. (For those who haven’t been following, the new rule allows a manager to open the eleventh inning with any hitter in his batting order, with the two previous batsmen in the lineup stationed already at first and second.) The Cubans began with two fleet runners on base: Héctor Olivera (pinch running for number eight hitter Ariel Pestano) stationed at second, and Luis Navas (now the ninth hitter and new shortstop replacement for Paret, who had left for pinch hitter Yoandry Urgellés in the top of the tenth) standing on first. Closer Jeff Stevens, whose wild pick-off toss in the ninth spelled defeat against Korea, was now on the hill for the Americans. Leadoff batter Giorvis Duvergel executed a perfect sacrifice bunt to set the table for the middle of the Cuban attack. Enríquez promptly responded by slashing a drive into right that plated both runners and established a 5-3 advantage. After Gourriel walked (Enríquez had already advanced to second on a relay to home plate following his single), Malleta bounced into an inning-ending double play which allowed Stevens to escape any further damage. But damage enough already had been done.

Johnson opted for a near identical strategy in his half of the eleventh, bringing number two hitter Jayson Nix at the plate with the obvious bunting assignment. When Lazo’s high and tight delivery glanced off Nix’s bat and kayoed the Colorado Rockies farmhand, Brian Barden assumed the bunting role and delivered in competent fashion. Tiffee almost supplied a dramatic walk-off blow moments later with his drive to deep center which Duvergel was able to run down and convert into a mere sacrifice fly. With the potential tying run now still standing at second in the person of Dexter Fowler, Lazo successfully induced Matt Brown to pop out tamely in foul territory. Replacement catcher Eriel Sánchez easily corralled the harmless fly ten feet in front of the backstop and sweet victory was in the bag for the opportunistic Cubans.

This latest USA-Cuba showdown encounter will now take its place very near the top of the most memorial in a long series of politically tinged slugfests between the world’s two greatest baseball-playing nations. (Sorry Japan, but the Asian teams are true kingpins of neither the professional nor Olympic versions of the sport). But the colorful game, with all its glorious twists and turns, will almost certainly be debated and relived in years to come for all the wrong reasons. Fans in Cuba (nobody in the USA was watching) will not relive Enríquez’s clutch hitting in the first and eleventh, or Despaigne’s second dramatic late-inning homer in as many days, or even Lazo’s brilliant six innings of efficient relief work that were equal to perhaps any of the Big Bear’s other half-dozen or so classic international tournament outings. What will likely remain on everyone’s lips and in everyone’s minds will instead be the unmerited outbursts of ill-tempered Davey Johnson aimed at Lazo’s imagined “purpose pitch” to Jayson Nix. And their will be endless discussions of the groundbreaking strategies attempted by both managers (more successfully by Pacheco, but only because Enríquez executed and the American hitters didn’t) to deal with unprecedented extra-inning circumstances. And foremost in our minds will remain the sour taste of both victory and defeat left by a scenario that gifted to both teams base runners that are supposed to be hard-earned in baseball’s true pressure-packed caldron of extra-inning tournament play.

The aberrations of the Cuba-USA game left aside for the moment, Day Three in Beijing also had its other noteworthy twists and turns of more traditional character. For one thing, the overall tournament picture was anything but clarified with yesterday’s results, since both Korea and Japan remained hot on the heels of front-runner Cuba, and both Team USA and Team Canada dug themselves something of a steep hole with the medal-round looming ever closer. As a result of its pair of final-inning breakdowns against Korea and Cuba, Johnson’s crew can ill-afford losses to both Canada (tomorrow) and Japan in the pool play finale; even a single defeat in any of the final USA games (the others are with Taipei and China) could but Davy Johnson’s team on the bubble, depending on results posted by the other contenders for four semifinal slots. Canada has been even less able to take advantage of late-inning chances than have the Americans, and they also must face Japan next Monday. After a tough late-inning loss to Cuba on Thursday, Terry Puhl’s group really let one get away yesterday against unbeaten Korea. Southpaw Hyunjin Ryu cruised through eight near-perfect shutout frames, scattering but three tame singles by Canada’s lefty-dominated battering order. But two hits and a walk loaded the bases for Puhl’s Boys in the bottom of the ninth and the Canadians were a blooper or line-drive away from the walk-off victory. Nonetheless Ryu held tough and induced a game-ending flyout to shallow center off the bat of veteran Ryan Radmanovich. Keunwoo Jeong blasted one deep over the left field wall in the third for the single Korean tally, but it was quite enough given Ryu’s pitching mastery. Although the Koreans have to date remained undefeated, they have done so largely with mirrors. Korea was also shut down for six full frames Thursday by upstart China in a deadlocked match that was eventually washed out with the score still frozen at zero-zero. Thus unblemished but hardly impressive Korea has scored only once in the last 17 frames, after plating eight runs against the Americans in their impressive opener.

For all the hype and implications of a Schiller-rule spoiled USA-Cuba tilt, the morning’s other “special rule” extra-inning cliff-hanger proved every bit as entertaining, gripping, and ultimately unsatisfying from a traditional baseball standpoint. Arch-rivals China and Taiwan (rivals on the political stage if not the baseball diamond) marched through a surprisingly competitive duel which took on extra tension when host China rallied for a surprising 3-2 lead heading to the ninth. Taiwan struck back to send the match to extra frames. Then in the first unsavory test of the new tie-breaker (this game started an hour earlier than Cuba-USA), both managers went for the obvious strategy of placing the final two batsmen in the lineup on the base paths and opening the frame with the leadoff hitter at the plate. The game-plan here is to use your best bunter to move both runners into scoring position with the top of the order next coming to the plate. In both cases the defense opted to provide a free pass to the second batsman; in both cases the strategy paid perfect dividends with the desired rally-killing double play. So we saw immediately that the two-on and batter-of-choice scenario was not at all a guarantee that runs would be quickly produced. Of course in the next inning all hell broke loose. In the top of the twelfth Taiwan pulled away with four markers; then in the home half the equally opportunistic Chinese managed by American Jim Lefebvre plated the necessary five runs to grab their first-ever Olympic tournament victory. The problem was that the final frame dragged on for the better part of an hour, and instead of a quick resolution we suffered through a dizzying marathon of excessive scoring.

I will reluctantly admit that I was fully intrigued and largely entertained (perhaps only because of the absurdity) by last-night’s Cuba win, earned via the novel set of late-inning circumstances. Readers of these reports may recall that a few days back I speculated on how Cuban or American fans or players would react in the aftermath of one of these over-hyped and tension-riddled clashes between the two clubs being settled only by the practice of giving managers free base runners and a shot at revamping their batting alignment. And as it turned out the nightmare scenario would be with us the very first time Cuba and Team USA squared off under the new regulations. If the game and its new strategies perhaps had an added dimension of drama and a new wrinkle in strategy tacked on, this is not at all to say that I or anyone else has been won over by the zany Olympic rule. I, like almost everyone, continue to believe that this new tie-breaking scheme is the worst thing to hit any version of the national pastime (Cuban or American) since artificial turf, exploding scoreboards, or World Series night games.

As LA Times baseball writer Kevin Baxter cogently commented in an email to this writer earlier today, the worst feature of the rule is that it rewards teams not capable of stringing together a series of hits: one solo and otherwise harmless blooper after the tenth frame can prove a vital game breaker. And more ridiculous still, we already saw last night that the main intention of the change will likely not be served. As usually happens when non-baseball people start meddling with the game’s sacred structure, simply because there is a dollar to be made or an entertainment opportunity to be served, what results is not only non-baseball but non-practical as well. The tie-breaker was supposed to prevent lengthy schedule-wrecking contests, but yesterday’s maiden China-Taiwan experiment lasted four hours and twenty minutes before it was concluded. It took nearly 40 minutes to complete the twelfth inning with its orgy of nine eventual runs. In the same time-span three or more tense scoreless innings could likely have been played. All we have done here is to replace a potential string of three-up and three-down rapid-fire frames with a marathon inning or two of sacrifice bunts, pitching changes, pinch runners, lengthy ball and strike counts, and desperate managerial strategies that remind us more of Sunday afternoon picnic softball than slick competitive tournament baseball. One inning of this type (as in the Cuba-USA match) is unsettling enough in its obvious unfairness by normal baseball standards; but two or more innings (the endless China versus Taipei match) can be a virtual dragged-out nightmare. If we are going to have baseball in the Olympics, then let us make sure it still looks like baseball. Why bother to salvage a game now robbed of its original logic?

If the novel tie-breaking system didn’t toss a large enough shadow over an otherwise delightful day of baseball, there was also the regrettable post-game press conference temper tantrum of USA manager Davey Johnson to contend with. Seemingly somewhat unraveled by late-inning developments and frustrated by his team’s nerve-fraying last-at-bat losses to Korea and then Cuba, Johnson was quick to voice his displeasure with both the tie-breaker format and the bunt-related eleventh-inning injury that cost him second baseman Jayson Nix for the remainder of the tournament. But it was the second matter that usurped most of Johnson’s attention: “I respect the way baseball is played in Cuba, but I don’t like it played that way. I believe in hard-nosed baseball and that’s how I played in my career. But in my wildest imagination, I didn’t think they’d throw it right at my player’s coconut.” The clear message here was that Johnson believed Pedro Lazo was intentionally aiming to bean Nix and thus load the bases with none out. Yet both game circumstances and Lazo’s own immediate reaction (he rushed to the plate to see if Nix was injured by the foul tip that struck his eyelid) argue strongly against Johnson’s interpretation. It makes no sense to think that the Cubans would elect to put the winning run on first with no outs in a sudden death situation. With runners gifted on first and second (via the new rule) Nix squared to sacrifice and Lazo did what any hurler in the big leagues would do: he threw a fastball high and tight in on the batter’s hands to make bunting fairly a difficult task. NBC replays showed the ball clearly struck Nix’s bat before caroming into his face. Lazo and Pacheco quite reasonably were both completely mystified by Johnson’s untoward allegations.

In his own news conference comments Pacheco praised the quality of the American opponents and defended Lazo by noting (somewhat ironically perhaps, given all the hype about Cuban “amateurs” playing USA pros) “we are professionals and we respect the game and the other team and its players.” But it was indeed an unnecessary defense against an unwarranted charge. And a surprising protest, at that, given Johnson’s several years of managerial experience in the arena of pressure-packed international baseball. Johnson’s momentary lapse, more than anything else, may have revealed just how much this game meant to both sides, and just how dissatisfying the results under the new tie-breaker regulations proved to be for both teams. In a récorded interview on Havana television Friday morning both Pacheco and extra-inning hero Michel Enríquez voiced strong objections to the tie-breaker. “We may have won,” reflected Enríquez, “but the taste is not the same as with normal victory because this system takes away from the spirit of the game.” Perhaps Johnson might have been better served by aiming some shots of his own at the IBAF rules committee rather than fantasizing about Lazo’s attempts to deck batter Jayson Nix. All Johnson accomplished here was to provide an extra measure of motivation for the defending Olympic champions in the likely scenario of a medal-round rematch. And that was anything but a wise move.

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.