August 1, 2007 - Rotterdam’s World Port Tournament is admittedly not one of the top showcase events of international baseball’s annual calendar of competitions. It rarely features top-level national teams, and it certainly doesn’t demand the attention associated with Olympic Games, IBAF World Cup, or even Pan American Games venues. If Cuba is, year-in and year-out, the Dutch tournament’s featured drawing card, it is rarely the top Cuban roster than visits Rotterdam in alternate Augusts. In fact, this year’s Cuban line-up, comprising what is nominally the Cuba B team, is easily the strongest ever sent to the event by the reigning and perennial world champions.

It is only since 1997 that the Cubans have bothered to send to Holland what could be considered a top-level national team. Earlier editions of this smaller-scale tournament were won by Cuban squads of league all-stars representing the port city of Havana—not the island nation--and those Cuban squads competed only against lesser amateur clubs representing European, Asian, and North American port cities like Dallas, Kobe, Baltimore and the host city itself.

Cuba has nevertheless held a prominent place in this tournament from its start in 1985, though surprisingly the Cubans have not actually dominated in Rotterdam as they have in most world-class tournaments. Cuban clubs representing Havana (and after 1997, the B-level national team) have come home winners in six of the ten previous events. This is an impressive winning total, certainly, yet one that pales when compared to ten straight Pan American Games crowns, three Olympic triumphs in four tries, or an uninterrupted gold medal string in the IBAF Baseball World Cup that stretches back to 1984 and now number nine titles and counting. Cuban clubs in Rotterdam in recent years have nonetheless featured such standouts as Orestes Kindelán, Yobal Dueñas and World Baseball Classic stalwart Vicyohandri Odelín. And the event which started out as a strictly club-team affair has in recent years evolved into a substantial venue for national teams from not only Cuba but also Japan, the USA and the Netherlands. Top national teams are now using the August Dutch competition as a warm-up for the top international tournaments on tap later in the fall season.

One of the factors lending this tournament its special flavor is the quaint but idyllic Neptunus Stadium on the outskirts of Rotterdam. This 12,000-seat venue, located adjacent of the city’s outstanding zoological park, remains one of my own favorite "off-the-beaten-path" ballparks and certainly one of the finest found anywhere in Europe. Neptunus Stadium doesn’t measure up to big league facilities in terms of either field conditions or fan comforts, and drainage problems admittedly plagued the final days of the IBAF World Cup matches played here in October 2005. But the home of the Dutch League’s Neptunus club is nonetheless a true "pastoral" venue and thus an ideal setting for watching high-level baseball as it was once played in a simpler era of smaller ballparks, open air, and intimate fan presence--and sometimes still is in international venues located far away from Major League Baseball’s shopping-mall-style 21st-century theme parks masquerading as baseball stadiums.

The World Port Tournament itself boasts a relatively short history when compared to other venues for international play, namely the IBAF World Cup (inaugurated in 1939 and called the Amateur World Series until 1988) or the Intercontinental Cup (which dates back to only 1973 but has always featured top-flight national teams). Rotterdam’s tournament alternates years with its sister event staged on the outskirts of Amsterdam and know as the Haarlem Baseball Week (where Cuba’s B-Team lost in the finals to the host Dutch squad last summer). There is little love lost in the friendly rivalry between the two Dutch baseball cities of Rotterdam and Haarlem, and each municipality goes all out in staging its own efforts to host a showcase world-class tournament. Always-competitive Cuban teams, especially, have played a major role in adding needed luster to these events with their annual visits to both cities for more than two decades.



Some outstanding players have been showcased in the Rotterdam event. Orestes Kindelán (Cuba), Robert Eenhoorn (Netherlands), Yobal Dueñas (Cuba), Vicyohandri Odelín (Cuba), and Raily Legito (Netherlands) are among the most recognizable names from this contingent of past stars. Kindelán is best known, perhaps, and is arguably the most prominent international star to perform on the stage of Neptunus Stadium. The all-time home run king of the Cuban League, who retired in 2001, smashed four ringing round trippers here the 1997 event. Current Netherlands team manager Bob Eenhoorn boasts four big-league seasons in the mid-1990s with the Yankees and Angels and made his mark in Rotterdam during the 1999 WPT, a mere two summers after his short "cup of coffee" in the big time. Dueñas--hero of the 2002 Intercontinental Cup in Havana and a top prospect in Cuba before departing the country in 2003, was the leading batsman in the 1997 Rotterdam competitions. Legito was a top-level minor leaguer in North America and also a member of the Dutch entry in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, and the Dutch Antilles native is back again this year with the Dutch club for another appearance in Neptunus Stadium. And hard-throwing righthander Odelín is perhaps best known outside of Cuba for his role in the recent WBC, where he saved the final game of the second round in San Juan (versus host Puerto Rico) with a stellar relief outing that lifted the surprising Cubans into the WBC finals in San Diego. Odelín will also be back for this year’s event as the anchor of one of the strongest pitching staffs Cuba has ever sent to a lower-level European tournament.

Perhaps the most noteworthy celebrity ballplayer appearance in this event, however, was made by long-time big league and Dutch-born Bert Blyleven. The 42-year-old returned to his native Holland in 1993 as pitching coach for a USA team called the MLB All-Stars and (while wearing his old Minnesota Twins uniform) hurled two starting innings in that summer’s opening tournament game.



This year’s matches promise a relatively highly level of competition. Cuba has to be the favorite, if only on the basis of its unmatched international tournament tradition. The Cuban roster, headed by Villa Clara manager Victor Mesa as field boss and the legendary Omar Linares as bench coach, is admittedly quite strong even without any of the top stars who captured gold at the recent Pan American champions. There will certainly be some noteworthy Cuban headliners in Rotterdam since this version of Cuba’s Team B is sprinkled with a half-dozen veterans of top-level international play. Foremost is a trio of veteran pitchers Odelín, Ciro Silvino Licea, and WBC semifinal starter Yadel Martí. But the offensive lineup also boasts some considerable punch in the bats of veteran outfielder Yasser Gómez, WBC reserve infielder Rudy Reyes, and long-time national team center fielder Carlos Tabares. This is undoubtedly the strongest B Team the Cubans have ever fielded and they are likely to be as tough a nut for the Americans or Dutch to crack as was the star-filled Cuban lineup that performed last month in Río de Janeiro.

The main competition for the front-running Cubans should come from host Netherlands (fielding the bulk of its WBC roster), a strong Japanese college all-star roster, and the same Team USA that last month lost the gold medal game in Río. The American roster is laced with collegiate All-Americans, many of whom are top big league hopefuls. Coached by Long Beach State’s Mike Weathers, the team features plenty of hitting (especially Pedro Alvarez and switch-hitting slugger Justin Smoak) and substantial pitching (Brett Hunter, Lance Lynn and Jacob Thompson at the head of the list); yet the USA club also features a considerable weak spot in its heavily left-handed starting nine. Cuba exploited this flaw during the Río showdown game when southpaw starter Adiel Palma tamed an American lineup stuffed with seven portside swingers. Nonetheless the Americans are a distinct threat, if only because their bench and bullpen are both crammed with legitimate major league prospects.

The top Rotterdam foes have already squared off several times this summer in the course of the ambitious tournament and exhibition schedule maintained by the American club. The Americans and Dutch faced each other only this past weekend in Durham, North Carolina, with Team USA copping two of the three outings. The heavy-hitting Americans (featuring the artillery of Texas Tech’s Róger Kieschnick and Vanderbilt’s Pedro Alvarez) crushed the visitors twice by lopsided 14-0 and 9-3 counts, but also dropped a tight 2-1 decision in the opener of last Sunday’s feature doubleheader. The American squad breezed though four Pan American Games contests in Río a week earlier, before stumbling in a classic 3-1 match versus Cuba’s best nine. Earlier the Americans also hosted the same Japanese ball club slated for Rotterdam, in a renewal of the annual rivalry between American and Japanese collegiate all-stars, and lost the long-standing series (3 games to 2, in several North Carolina venues) for the first time in a dozen years.

The format for this year’s event is a double-round-robin affair culminating in a single championship contest. Each club meets all opponents twice, with the two top ball clubs squaring off in a single championships clash on the final Sunday. Several tie-breakers are in place in the highly likely event that several teams tie for the top two spots. Highlight contests promise to be the Cuba-USA matches scheduled for Monday afternoon (August 6) and Saturday afternoon (August 11). But Team Cuba’s popularity throughout the Netherlands will mean spirited games and packed houses when the kingpins of international baseball confront the host Dutch national team on the first Sunday afternoon (August 5), and then again the following Friday evening (August 10) in the Cubans’ only contest under the lights. The full tournament schedule is as follows:



The action promises to be hot and heavy over the next twelve days and it can all be followed game-by-game right here in my daily reports from the scene. I will be filing stories on this website (in English) that will include summaries of all individual games, observations of the level of play, reports on up-and-coming stars on the international baseball scene, and whatever other newsworthy items may arise during the two-weeks of pitched international competition.

My own predictions are as follows: 1-Cuba, 2-USA, 3-Netherlands, 4-Japan, 5-Chinese Taipei. Cuba’s mix of young prospects (José Julio Ruiz, Alexei Bell, Yolexis Ulacia) and seasoned veterans (Ciro Silvino Licea, Yadel Martí, Vicyohandri Odelín) all trying to impress enough to win spots of the November World Cup roster--should be sufficient to hold back the talented young American college all-stars who trailed Cuba’s A Team in Río. The Netherlands squad will enjoy home field advantage but was not overly impressive in Durham against Team USA this past weekend. Japan’s college all-stars could be the dark horse, especially after their several victories over the Americans in early July. Chinese Taipei, with its history of weak international performances over the years, seems clearly to be the odd team out as the week’s events open in Rotterdam.

Report provided by author Peter C. Bjarkman, who can also be found at www.bjarkmanlatinobaseball.mlblogs.com.