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More Hits, Runs, and Personal Observations from the Italian Coast
by Peter C. Bjarkman
Special for www.baseballdecuba.com
Supposedly there are no nine-inning ties in baseball—unless, of course, we are talking about rigidly scheduled international tournament games, highly untenable weather conditions, or those international “friendly” matches which are only glorified exhibition games and thus where victory is only an afterthought. A dose of all these elements (especially the near-freezing wind-blown playing conditions) combined yesterday at Ronchi dei Legionare Field in Friuli to provide just this type of rarity—a highly entertaining if not always artistic nine-inning 1-1 deadlock of Cuba’s second match versus host Italy.
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Town of Codogno in North Central Italy welcomes the exhibition match between Cuba and the host Italian national team. |
While no game without victory is very welcomed by an always-potent Cuban national squad conditioned to relentless winning, this particular outing was nonetheless full of small positives. Bench players like Peraza, Martin, Duvergel and Borroto earned valuable playing time on the eve of official World Cup matches. Rookie Miguel Alfredo González and veteran Jonder Martínez both turned in effective mound stints. And rookie first base prospect José Dariel Abreu provided a clutch ninth-inning pinch-hit single. Italy’s only tally resulted from a dropped infield fly by Ariel Borrero in the fifth. But the true highlight of the night came on Leonys Martin’s spectacular throw from the deep right field corner to gun down Jorge Ramos (trying to leg out a seeming double) in the fourth frame. A second showcase moment came with Alfredo Despaigne’s two-out liner past third in the ninth to finally deadlock a game that seemed to promise almost certain defeat.
If the outcome was a bit frustrating for the still-undefeated Cuban forces, at least the contest this time around was a spirited match free of the unsportsmanlike showboating displayed by Team Venezuela one evening earlier at the same venue. That previous contest, on the second night of Cuba’s short sojourn at Friuli’s Italian Baseball Week, had provided some truly ugly baseball displays of a type that have unfortunately marred a number of Cuba-Venezuela and Cuba-Panama matches at recent international events. Apparently frustrated that their MLB-affiliated professionals can never seem to get the better of Cuba’s renowned “amateurs,” the Venezuelans once again arrived on Friday with an overblown swagger and an apparent heavy chip on their collective shoulders. Fireworks began when shortstop Andy Chavez was nicked by a Norge Vera curveball, causing the Venezuelan bench to storm onto the field and tensions to soar nearly to a boiling point. Chavez had homered to lead off the contest and was greeted at home plate by his entire bench in a manner usually reserved for a game-winning walk-off. But the motive for Vera’s fifth-inning “purpose pitch” did not seem to be Chavez’s antics in the first frame so much as the behavior of Venezuelan on-deck hitters. The latter group were warned on more than a half-dozen occasions by umpire Lorenzo Bastianello for drifting behind home plate in an apparent effort to steal Cuban signs or to assess Vera’s deliveries. Batianello finally grew tired of these antics in the eighth and booted several ballplayers from the Venezuelan bench. All this had occurred in what was actually only a tune-up exhibition match.
With the dust finally settled on yet another overly emotional Cuba-Venezuela mismatch there remains time for some of this author’s personal observations on what has transpired during this first week of pre-tournament preparations and exhibitions. Some of the following commentary is likely to inflame some partisan passions and stir some debate among island fans. Some is intended merely to inform and perhaps entertain with several off-the-field curiosities. And some will likely bore those who come to this website searching for game results or game-analysis only. Those not interested in local color surrounding Italian Baseball Week or off-the-field developments attached to Team Cuba are thus advised in advance to skip the remainder of this report.
This writer has long been intrigued by the uniform number switches of long-team national team backstop Ariel Pestano, who sports jersey number “13” for his National Series club in Villa Clara yet dons number “8” on his Team Cuba shirt. Other players of note have made such switches, but usually only because of obvious conflicts. For example, Osmani Urrutia switched from his familiar “46” (with Las Tunas) to “76” only when Orestes Kindelán (who also had worn “46” throughout his own spectacular career) returned to the national team scene as a coach. Eriel Sánchez wears “55” in Sancti Spíritus but adopted “5” when Alex Mayeta became a national squad fixture a couple of years back. But no one else overlaps Pestano with the superstitious number thirteen. I finally pressed Pestano on the issue here in Cervignano and he gave the following explanation. The “13” jersey was his since his earliest playing days with junior level teams and he has maintained it at home for his entire career. He adopted “8” (the traditional “number of the dead” in Cuban folklore) in solemn tribute to his mother, who passed away prematurely in the late 1990s and therefore never was able to watch her son emerge as an international tournament all-star.
Moving to more game-related issues, two players in particular have both surprised and mightily impressed this writer over the course of the first week here in southern Europe. The first is newly entrenched shortstop Luis Miguel Navas while the yet another is promising first base prospect José Dariel Abreu. Navas is not altogether popular with Havana-based fans (after all he plays for Santiago) and I have heard repeated complaints voicedin the capital that Navas (whose home jersey always seems to drop the final “silent s”) inherited the job from aging Eduardo Paret via a conspiracy on the part of Santiago (and former national team) manager Antonio Pacheco and commissioner Higino Vélez, also a native of Oriente. But anyone who things that Navas isn’t the right man for the job hasn’t been watch with an attentive and objective eye. His range in the middle infield is impressive indeed, his arm is not only exceptionally strong but unerringly accurate, and his bat at the bottom of the batting order is more than adequate in a lineup so filled with dependable sluggers. If there is a Santiago connection here at all it is the plus factor that Navas plays all season alongside Héctor Olivera, now the entrenched national squad second baseman. Abreu for his part may lack international experience. Yet the Cienfuegos phenom has repeatedly displayed a very quick bat and also very soft hands in the considerable playing time he has already enjoyed here in Italy.
The road to victory in this month’s 38th World Cup edition will not be overly easy for the still-front-running Cubans by any measure. This tournament promises to be by far the most competitive IBAF-sponsored baseball festival staged to date. Release of official tournament rosters by 20 teams (with Round 2 host countries Italy and The Netherlands not yet required to provide lineups) reveals a World Cup récord number of more than 100 MLB-affiliated ballplayers not current playing on big league 25-man rosters. Joining this contingent are 11 former major league professionals and 13 veterans of Korean Baseball Organization play. There are also numerous pros from other (especially European-based) leagues, and the number will swell with the Dutch and Italian final rosters. The result is the participation by twice the number of crack professional players that appeared at the previous IBAF World Cup in Taiwan (during November 2007).
Yet if this week has sent any message to the rest of the World Cup entrants it is the fact that Cuba will nonetheless still be a strong favorite to ring up a twenty-sixth world championship later this month in Nettuno. For one thing this Cuban club (unlike the one that went to Haarlem last July on the eve of the Beijing Olympiad) has already been hitting the ball with authority in four training matches. One reason seems to be an easing up on the much-criticized regimen of excessive physical training that last summer had Cuban hitters taking 200 swings daily right up until the first August pitch in China. Still another thing going for this particular squad is the fact that they seem as a group to be more relaxed and confident than any Cuban club I have been around in years. And this likely should be mostly attributed to the positive attitude and quite leadership provided by novice manager Esteban Lombillo.
Only one pressing question seems to surround the current game plan of the Cuban brain trust. This would be the decision of Lombillo, Vélez and Eduardo Martin to showcase in the early going a relatively stable lineup and thus to use most sparingly the crucial bench personnel. Abreu, Martin and Sánchez were the only non-starters among position players (not counting one pinch-running assignment for Duvergel) to earn field time in the opening three contests. But that of course changed in last night’s meaningless game with Italy. Peraza logged valuable at-bats, Duvergel saw eight innings in center field, Borroto manned shortstop, and Abreu was used as a crucial-situation substitute batter. Sánchez also logged his second game behind the plate. Although Cuba’s second-line batsmen were somewhat stymied by effective but not overpowering Italian pitching (Peraza did double and drill the ball hard on several occasions), this live game experience will likely prove very valuable down the road. Before such a lengthy and grinding event runs its full course, Peraza, Borroto and Abreu in particular may eventually have to be pressed into occasional emergency service.
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Italian scoreboard in Ronchi dei Legionaire feature of course Roman numerals to mark innings. |
A few final comments on the unique atmosphere and rare spectacle surrounding Italian-style baseball seem also to be in order. I have already noted my fascination with local scoreboards that display Roman numerals to mark innings and feature unorthodox arrangements for line-score totals. And the public address announcements provided to fans offer a virtual play-by-play account of the action, rather than mere barebones lineup information (as in Cuba) or a litany of noisome commercial advertisements (as in the United States). While the more savvy American or Cuban fan doesn’t need to be told that each pitch is either a ball or strike (that information also appears on the scoreboard) or that the batter just grounded to third or was forced out at second, this is certainly a pleasant alternative to being reminded in big league parks that every pitching change is sponsored by some motor oil manufacturer, or worse still, being hounded to participate in orchestrated mass cheers by blaring choruses beamed from five-story-high flashing video boards. Italian baseball is delightfully still all about savoring the simple thrills of the barebones athletic spectacle.
Starting times for Italian games seem to be as flexible as scoreboard designs; two of the four games so far have begun more than a half hour later than the advertised schedule. The first time this happened on opening night in Codogno it was clearly due to an understandable but somewhat mismanaged string of pre-game rituals and ceremonies; but the delayed start on Cuba’s first visit to Ronchi went unexplained. The only contest where a real concern about a prompt opening seemed to exist was the one staged in Cervignano, where sparse lighting threatened to disrupt any contest that was not concluded well before sundown.
Just getting to ballgames here in Italy can prove to be a considerable challenge, even for the seasoned tourist. The hotbed centers of Italian baseball do not necessarily lie in metropolitan areas but are found instead in outlying villages or secondary cities spread across northern sectors of Lombardy and Friuli, or on the outskirts of Florence (Grosseto) and Rome (Nettuno). A saving grace here is that one can reach almost any obscure Italian outpost via train; it is the number of hours required to negotiate such cross-country excursions that proves challenging. And even in smaller towns the ballparks are not always an easy target. Cuba’s opening match here in Cervignano (versus Taiwan on Thursday) was staged at a field less than a half-hour’s walk from the team hotel. But three following matches have been slated for Ronchi, a winding 40-minute (and 50 Euro) rural taxi ride from the team’s home base. And once in the park there can also be other unexpected hazards. Pro scouts at Friday evening’s Cuba-Venezuela match in Ronchi struggled with radar gun readings being scrambled by the nearby local airport. The cramped Ronchi press box (occupied by scouts, journalists, scoreboard and PA operators, and numerous other officials) is a mere pit wedged under the grandstand behind home plate. It provides bench seating for only about a dozen and standing room space for only approximately double that number. The very same “press box” also serves as the crowded tunnel runway into two team locker rooms and the ballplayers’ only toilet facilities. But the view of playing action is of course unmatched from only about sixty feet behind the batters’ boxes.
But one thing most positive about the game over here is a growing Italian love for the sport and a particular appreciation for the talents of the Cuban team. Italy’s apparent fascination with Cuban baseball is in fact nearly unsurpassed anywhere on foreign soil. Only The Netherlands runs a close second in this respect. Italian fans are attentive to the details of the “American” game, appreciative of its numerous subtleties and technicalities, and definitely passionate in their welcoming of sterling play by both hometown heroes and visiting opponents alike. The only crowd dismay or loudly voiced displeasure came last night when a surprise announcement was made that the deadlocked Italy-Cuba game was being suspended after nine frigid innings. It was a most understandable response from the packed house of about 2,000 that had remained glued to the spectacle throughout nearly three hours of intense competition staged under truly frigid local conditions
Peter C. Bjarkman is traveling with Team Cuba across Europe (Spain, The Netherlands, Italy) during September’s IBAF World Cup tournament and reporting regularly with his exclusive columns and articles for www.baseballdecuba.com. Bjarkman’s latest book—Baseball’s Other Big Red Machine: A History of the Cuban National Team (McFarland)—is scheduled for publication in early spring 2010.
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