For the still unbeaten Cuban juggernaut it was once again “business as usual” on Day Four of Olympic action. Pacheco’s resilient club won another of the nail-biting close decisions that have been a four-decade staple of Cuban international tournament baseball. The match with dangerous if inconsistent Chinese Taipei had all the ingredients of a possible major upset, of course, since the Cubans were coming off three straight tough early “must-wins” games versus Japan, Canada and Team USA. The fact that twice-beaten Taiwan had also just suffered a devastating “Schiller Rule” 8-7 extra-inning upset at the hands of rival China also seemed to spell danger for the “sitting duck” Cubans. The front runners—already virtually assured of a playoff seed—didn’t need victory in this game anywhere as much as the Asians did. But this scenario has been played out so many times before in other Olympic, World Cup or Intercontinental Cup Olympic venues. Only twice in four previous Olympic tournaments have the Cubans dropped a pool play match (it was versus Holland in Sydney), and one of those setbacks came at the hands of the pre-tourney Athens favorites from Japan. Cuba somehow seemingly invents ways to win these danger-fraught games time-in and time-out, either with clutch hitting on days when the pitching is less-than-spectacular, or clutch-pitching on the occasions when the bats have fallen asleep. This time around it was a little bit of both.

Chinese Taipei gave the Beijing leaders and defending champions everything they could ask for and then some on the defensive side, mainly in the form of pitching brilliance from starter Chen-Chang Lee. The right-hander mystified Cuban batsmen for the better part of seven innings and easily pitched out of jams the two times they arose. There was a brief Cuba uprising in the second when Cepeda walked and Alexei Bell slammed a loud double to left, but the rally was quickly squelched. The frustrated Cubans left a pair aboard (both reaching without benefit of a base hit) in the third to boot. Camagüey southpaw Elier Sánchez—a last-minute addition to Antonio Pacheco’s staff in Korea when Yulieski González and Yunieski Maya were surprisingly sent home—flashed the brilliance of a couple of years back by matching Lee shutout inning for shutout inning all the way to the top of the seventh. Sánchez, obviously recovered from the arm trouble that slowed his recent National Series campaign, kept his team very much in the game by allowing only three unproductive Chinese base hits. And then, as on so many occasions in the past, the Cuban juggernaut got the one boost it sorely need, and it came from a most familiar source. Freddie Cepeda, one of Cuba’s biggest clutch performers on the international scene, smashed a solo shot deep into the right field bleachers in the home seventh and that was the needed margin of victory. Cepeda’s round-tripper awoke not-so-distant memories of a similar clutch grand “batazo” that salvaged last November’s World Cup opener in Taipei City against overachieving Australia. With Cepeda’s big hit in the books, Norberto González efficiently closed the door on the scrappy Taiwanese with his second flawless “save” performance of the opening week.

Frederich Cepeda hit a solo home run in the 7th inning giving Cuba a decisive 1-0 lead in the game against Taipei in their baseball preliminary game at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Cuba’s 1-0 victory over Chinese Taipei was hardly a life-and-death win; however, it was crucial enough, since it did clinch a slot in next Friday’s semifinal medal-round opener. And it is looking more and more now like that match will be played against either Japan or the United States. With both Korea and Cuba standing and 4-0 after the toughest parts of their respective schedules, the two pool play leaders should be undefeated when they clash Monday night in a match that likely will determine the preliminary round first place prize. The loser obviously should stand second. Japan and the United States (now both 2-2) are seemingly destined to fight it out on the final day of pool play for the third and fourth qualifying positions. All that might disrupt that likely scenario would be a USA loss to Taipei, or a Japanese slip against the Canadians; either scenario might lift a reeling Team Canada (1-3) back into last-minute contention. Chinese Taipei, for its part, needs a miracle finish against Korea, Canada and the Americans just to stay barely alive in the four or five team medal-round hunt. Only The Netherlands (Cuba, Canada and Korea all on deck) and host China (USA, Japan, Cuba now remaining) seem to have zero chance to rise from the dead.

Korea has been just as invincible as co-leader Cuba in the close matches, and yet they have opposition blunders as much as their own offensive heroics to thank for a pair of 1-0 victories over Canada and China. Despite brilliant complete-game shutout pitching by Hyunjin Ryu, who allowed only three ineffective and isolated singles before a brief ninth-inning Canadian rally, it was the failure of Team Canada to cash in on their bases-loaded ninth inning threat that clinched victory for Korea on the first occasion. And China self-destructed two days later when they first lost a golden eleventh-inning scoring chance of their own because of a base-running blunder (runner Lingfeng Sun was called out for leaving third base early on a perfect sacrifice fly off the bat of Fei Fang), and moments later allowed the game winner to cross home plate on a Seungyoup Lee bases-loaded single (but only after a poor throw to third failed to cut down a lead runner on Keunwoo Jeong’s attempted sacrifice bunt). It is not entirely unfair to say that where Cuba has been repeatedly opportunistic, Korea has been more than anything else extremely lucky.

The biggest doubts for island fans back home on the eve of Beijing competitions seemed to involve the much-hyped Red Machine offense and its abilities to finally live up to advanced billing. For this writer, however, the unanswered mystery remained (after Haarlem, at least) the overall effectiveness of Cuban pitching. Through four games in the Olympic venue, Cuba’s bats have unquestionably revived; yet to date there have been no big offensive explosions and the hitting has been more well-timed than fine-tuned. Rookie Alfredo Despaigne carried the offensive the first two games, with a small assist from Alexei Bell. Enríquez and Cepeda came alive at precisely the right moments in games three and four. What has kept Cuba on top of the heap more than anything else, however, has been the solid starting pitching by Norge Luis Vera (Japan), Luis Miguel Rodríguez (USA) and Elier Sánchez (Taiwan), plus the extraordinary twin pair of relief outings by Lazo (Japan, USA) and Norberto González (Canada, Taipei). This tournament in the end will likely still turn on the arms coming out of the Cuban bullpen in the late innings of medal-round games. The competition here is far too balanced to expect any wide margins on the scoreboard that might allow the Cuban mound corps to merely coast in the late innings of rematches with either Korea, Japan, or the highly motivated Americans.

As we enter the second week and thus the second half of pool play, Cuba only has to guard against complacency that might kill momentum heading into the late-week vital championship round games. Matches versus The Netherlands and China may not mean much of anything in the standings. But in these short-schedule tournaments it is never a good idea to let the offense grow stale or the pitching efforts become lackadaisical. But for the Americans and Japanese, by contrast, there is now a world of pressure to escape the disappointments that have so far attached themselves to both clubs. Who would have predicted that at this stage the American big league prospects and Japanese Dream Team veterans would be fighting to stay above .500 and thus in playoff contention? And two other early contenders—Canada and Chinese Taipei—have now both fallen into nothing less than desperation mode. Both of these latter clubs now seem destined to play nothing better than “spoiler” roles at best. The Taiwanese performed well against Cuba but have been inconsistent otherwise (remaining dormant versus Japan and seeming shell-shocked in the late innings versus rival China); with three of their biggest challenges remaining on the docket, however, they could nonetheless still derail the playoff plans of either Canada or Team USA, or even poke a considerable hole in Korea’s potential first-place bubble.

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.