Freddie Cepeda smacks the first of two homers launching Team Cuba’s onslaught in Mexico.

Pool B action at the World Baseball Classic debuted Sunday with a loud and welcomed bang. Cuba launched the day’s doubleheader festival of hits with an unparalleled offensive show that put their game with overmatched South Africa away almost before 11,280 fans had settled in their seats. Before the evening was out underdog Australia would be making its own impressive headlines with an unexpected second game drubbing of early pool favorite Mexico. A WBC récord six homers highlighted Cuba’s easy 8-1 cakewalk over a spirited South African club that is still looking for its first triumph on the WBC stage. And another récord book performance—22 base hits (four of which were also home runs)—spelled the difference in Australia’s mauling of confident and underachieving Mexico. Early predictions that Mexico City’s 7,400-foot altitude might result in unprecedented offensive displays was quickly proven to be right on target.

Cuba’s afternoon display of robust slugging against the shell-shocked South Africans demonstrated at least two talking points. One was that the Cubans were indeed ready to play in this year’s tournament, and well enough armed to be considered as serious contenders to return to the final round. And a second affirmation was simply that hitting—even récord-style hitting—would apparently be the keynote story here in Mexico City. Of course, the two one-sided games also left open the question of whether the slugging displays of the two winners were best attributed to Foro Sol’s thin atmosphere, or might instead be better laid at the door of rather shoddy South African and Mexican pitching.

Cuba’s quick start out of the gate was launched, as so many times in the past, by reliable team leader Frederich Cepeda. If Team Cuba has a true “money ballplayer” than it has to be the amazing Cepeda, who has time and again stroked vital home runs in the nation’s biggest international games. Today Freddie rocked the first pitch he saw from 6-5 starter Barry Armitage deep into the left-field seats, quickly opening his team’s advantage. Cepeda’s second trip to the plate brought another line drive—this time over the right field wall—that expanded the comfortable margin to five runs.

But Cepeda wasn’t the whole story here today in an overall superb Cuban performance at the plate, in the field, and also on the pitcher’s mound. Four other Cuban sluggers also displayed their power games, with Alfredo Despaigne (second inning with Mayeta aboard), Héctor Olivera (a solo shot leading off the fifth), Yulieski Gourriel (a second solo homer in the fifth), and Yoénnis Céspedes (closing the scoring in the sixth) also reaching the outfield walls. The afternoon’s demonstration of long balls erased a previous WBC récord set by the Dominican Republic (4, on March 7, 2006, versus Venezuela). But this may well be a récord that won’t stand for very long given that four games still remain here in hitter-friendly confines of Foro Sol.

Besides the headline-grabbing home runs there was also a less-noted offensive display by veteran catcher Ariel Pestano (two ringing doubles in three official at-bats), as well as some very classy Cuban pitching on the part of starter Norge Vera and relievers Norberto González, Ismel Jiménez, and Vladimir García. Vera completed six shutout innings, allowing only two singles and striking out six. González and Jiménez both logged single perfect innings with two Ks apiece. This was admittedly not the kind of intimidating lineup Cuban pitchers will face throughout in the remainder of the tournament. But Higinio’s mound corps was nonetheless sharp and efficient from start to finish. There was only one small breakdown at game’s end when 20-year-old Vlad García (in his maiden international outing) allowed a one-out single by Anthony Phillips, wild pitched Phillips to second with two retired, and then surrendered a second single to Johnathan Phillips which finally killed the shutout.

The dust had hardly settled on Cuba’s impressive afternoon debut before Team Australia went to work carving out its own early-round WBC headline story. Cuban skipper Vélez had sternly warned the press after Sunday’s first game that they should not be so quick to start talking about a Tuesday night Mexico City showcase match up between his team and the MLB-rich hosts. It was a warning that perhaps the Mexican team itself could have benefited from hearing. Australian players were reportedly fired up by the party atmosphere apparent in the Mexican dugout a half-hour before game time. In the post-game press conference Australian pitcher Paul Mildren was quick to comment on his team’s pre-game inspirations. “They had a mariachi band or something like that in their dugout and I suddenly decided I somehow just wanted this game a little bit more.”

It appeared in the early going of last night’s game that Mexico might be just as good—on the offensive end anyway—as their press clippings had suggested. After starter Oliver Pérez yielded a first-inning uprising of three runs, which included homers by Luke Hughes and Chris Snellling, the host club quickly answered with a five-run barrage of its own in the home half of the initial frame. The big blow was a grand slam off the bat of DH Jorge Vasquez (New York Yankees). But things just got worse and worse as the evening progressed for Vinny Castilla’s forces. Nursing a 7-4 advantage through four frames, Mexican pitching suddenly fell apart, beginning with the top of the fifth. In that inning the Aussies stormed back to a tie on the strength five singles and an ill-timed wild pitch by reliever Rafael Diaz. After the deadly fifth, five additional ineffective hurlers (including big leaguers Ricardo Rincón, Dennys Reyes, and Francisco Rodríguez) would surrender a devastating barrage of ten Aussie runs (3 each in the sixth and eighth, and four more in the seventh) to close out the mercy rule onslaught.

Australia’s post-fourth-inning hitting display (13 runs on 15 hits and two additional homers) was every bit as impressive as Cuba’s and maybe even more so. But it was also somewhat harder to assess, given the fact that Mexican pitching was lackluster at best, despite the presence of some veteran ex-big-league southpaw arms like Rincón and Reyes. And the Mexican defense was nothing to brag about either, committing only one rally-aiding error yet several times throwing inaccurately to cutoff men and thus extending scoring opportunities. But be that as it may, Australia was more than impressive at the plate, especially once Mexican pitching began to deteriorate. And the emboldened Aussies also displayed some effective mound work in the late innings. Liam Hendricks (1.2 innings), Damian Moss (1.2 innings, and the winning pitcher), and LA Angels prospect Rich Thompson (2.0 innings) completely shut down vaunted Mexican bats (allowing only four harmless hits) over the final five frames.

The offense remained the big story, however, and Team Australia wrote its own way into the WBC récord books with its 22-hit performance. The previous mark of 18 had been set on March 10, 2006 (Team USA versus South Africa). By nearly midnight, as stadium lights finally dimmed after the nearly four-hour finale, one was left wondering just how many more récords might tumble this week in the thin air of Foro Sol. But then baseball is a funny game and Cuba will certainly offer far better pitching to test both the Aussies and Mexicans (if the latter indeed now get a second chance).

By the end of its nightcap affair the dismantled Mexican team was battling the home crowd as well the offense-minded forces from Australia. The assembled throng of 20,831 (capacity 27,000) continually booed their home town favorites as Australia stretched out the lead in late frames. A chorus of loud catcalls descended on Vinny Castilla and company in their final at-bat of the eight-inning knock out affair. And the hefty round of “Bronx Cheers” might have been still worse if the stadium had not begun to empty out long before the final Mexican at-bat.

So now the stage is set for a potentially “classic” Cuba-Australia showdown on Tuesday evening. The game will be the “main stage coming out party” for Cuban southpaw phenom Aroldis Chapman, who turned heads by dominating Japan in the 2007 World Cup finals (as a raw)19-year-old), and who has already made headlines this season back on the island with the fastest timed pitch (102 mph) in Cuban baseball history. With Chapman and big league prospect Travis Blackley (Arizona Diamondbacks) filling the starting assignments, both clubs will assuredly see far better opposition pitching than they did on opening day. While the favored Cubans are at mid-season form, the Aussies are also, having arrived in Mexico with a number of players who only recently participated in that country’s Claxton Shield championship tournament.

These two clubs have enjoyed some memorable confrontations in recent years and have thus established along the way something of a heated intercontinental rivalry. First there was the Aussies’ victory over a somewhat watered-down Team Cuba in the finals of the Sydney 1999 Intercontinental Cup. There was also the tense Gold Medal finale in Athens five years back, a 6-2 Cuban victory decided by Cepeda’s early homer and Carlos Tabares’s “questionable” late-inning outfield “circus” catch. And most recently we witnessed an extra-inning Taiwan World Cup opener that topped all other Cuba-Aussie showdowns for pure drama. Cepeda and Urrutia saved that most recent match with solo homers in the ninth and tenth innings, after Aussie pitching has so effectively closed the doors on the superior Cuban attack for nine full frames. Similar heroics may again be needed on Tuesday evening if Cuba is to avoid a do-or-die showdown game versus the wounded Mexicans twenty-four hours latter.



Peter C. Bjarkman, author of A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006, will cover the 2009 WBC II for www.baseballdecuba.com from Mexico City, San Diego and Los Angeles. His latest books entitled Baseball’s Other Big Red Machine: The History of the Cuban National Team and Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1962-2007 will appear from McFarland & Company Publishers during the coming year.