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World Cup Baseball is a Rollercoaster Ride with Many Twists and Turns
by Peter C. Bjarkman
Special for www.baseballdecuba.com
It is not only the evening game-time temperatures that have been surging and ebbing all week long here in Haarlem, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Baseball at almost any level is itself a sport in which a particular team’s fortunes can ebb and flow just as wildly as chaotic Dutch September weather. From big league to little league, any particular day’s results are never predictable no matter what reputation or récord the opposition might carry; league frontrunner’s are often upended by surprisingly strong single-outing pitching or slugging from lackluster tail enders. This is a game of strange bounces and of inexplicable streaks and slumps, and thus one where even superior teams (with the noted exception, perhaps, of Cuban squads themselves in international venues) are normally destined to drop every third outing across a full season‘s action. But the Cubans for their part are quite unaccustomed to losing single games let alone tournament titles, and therefore Friday’s upset at the hands of surging Puerto Rico would have been an eye-opener under almost any conditions.
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Norge Vera will likely be Cuba’s “ace in the hole” against host Holland in Sunday’s must-win showdown. |
In this particular case, however, the 5-2 loss by Lombillo’s previously unbeaten squad (7-0 in rounds one and two) carries with it some dire consequences. The result left the Cubans and Puerto Ricans deadlocked for second slot (at 4-1) behind still unbeaten Holland with only two games remaining. Under this year’s drastically altered World Cup format this is not at all good news for a Cuban squad bent on recapturing a world title disappointingly lost to the Americans two years ago in Taiwan. In 29 previous appearances in what was known as baseball’s “amateur world series” up until 1988, the Cubans have brought home gold an amazing 25 times, and also medaled on the all four other occasions (two silver and two bronze). There is no récord in all sport that can quite match the Cuban baseball world championship run. And that string now stands very much in jeopardy.
A much criticized format for deciding final medal positions unfortunately heavily favors teams’ second round successes rather than their final-round surges. Four teams advancing from Holland to round three next week in Italy will each play four games against the Italian round-two qualifiers; the round-three leader from the Holland group (Group F) will then reach the gold medal match against the frontrunner of the Italian quartet (Group G). But in the likely case of equal four-game récords in Italy next week (say a tie in the standings between Holland and Cuba, or Puerto Rico and Cuba), round-two games between the four Group F contenders played back here in The Netherlands will also be counted. This all means that the team finishing first in The Netherlands this week (no longer an easy feat for Lombillo’s charges) holds a huge edge in the race toward a September 27 gold medal showdown in Nettuno. If Cuba finishes second or third in Group F (a likely possibility in the event of a three-way deadlock with Puerto Rico and Holland, given the runs-allowed tie-breaker rule), Cepeda and company will have to capture at least three of four matches versus the Americans, Australians, Taiwanese, and probably the Canadians in order to survive. And at the same time the other three Group F entrants will each have to lose on at least a couple of occasions to cement Cuba’s gold or silver medal prospects. At this point it is all just about as clear as mud.
Until late in last night’s disappointing outcome none of this added pressure seemed very likely. Cuba was apparently on a decided roll and only a likely first-place showdown on Sunday with The Netherlands seemed a remaining obstacle. The Cubans had eased past the opposition four straight nights, encountering only a modest challenge from Nicaragua (in a game put away in the late innings by a pair of two-run blasts from Yulieski Gourriel and Alfredo Despaigne) and peaking with consecutive 10-0 knockout waltzes in Amsterdam (featuring the pitching mastery of Norge Vera and Miguel Alfredo González). Through four round two games the Cubans had registered three shutouts and outscored the opposition by a whopping 30-1 margin. They had run their overall tournament mark to 7-0, rung up three shutouts in mercy-rule fashion, and trailed only the Americans (playing over in Italy) in the slugging department, with 17 homers (at least one in each of the seven contests). It almost all seemed too easy, and of course it all was.
Frigid weather was definitely tempered here in The Netherlands at week’s outset by hot Cuban bats and equally torrid Cuban pitching. Having dodged a late-game bullet against upstart Spain on the final day in Barcelona—thanks to Yosvany Peraza’s latest slugging heroics—a supremely confident Cuban club debuted in Haarlem and Amsterdam apparently riding on cruise control. Despite strong winds and sub-40 degree temperatures at Pim Mülier Stadium Sunday evening, rookie Freddie Asiel Alvarez pitch effortlessly in registering a complete-game 2-hit shutout gem (9 Ks and but three walks) against a gritty but overmatched Great Britain outfit. Pestano (with his third circuit blast of the tournament) and Céspedes (his second) continued the Cuban home run parade and Cepeda also chipped in with a pair of doubles. Southpaw Yulieski González was nearly as effective if not quite as dominant (5.2 innings, 4 hits, 5 Ks) during early stages of the second outing versus Nicaragua, a game played in the same Haarlem venue under equally frigid conditions. On the heels of a fifth-inning 45-minute rain delay Pedro Lazo closed down the Nicaraguan bats and Despaigne’s ninth-inning blast provided some comfortable breathing room. The back-to-back 10-0 wins in Amsterdam featured still another pair of mound gems by Norge Vera (seven shutout frames with 10 Ks) and Miguel Alfredo (also 7 frames with only a pair of hits allowed); and there was still more heavy artillery, especially from Abreu (single, double and triple versus Venezuela and 4 RBIs versus Spain), Despaigne (his fourth homer in the Venezuela game), and Pestano (another homer and four RBIs versus Spain).
Cuban pitchers had been the headline story here in Holland (as they were in Barcelona) throughout the first several days. I had earlier suggested that the team’s ultimate successes would ride on effective arms more than upon a potent offense, and that has remained the case—for good or bad—all week long. Norge Vera leads the way among tournament pitchers with 14 shutout innings, 18 Ks against only a pair of free passes, and a meager .143 opposition batting average. Freddy Asiel has also so far been untouched (9 shutout innings) with a 9-3 K-BB ratio and an even stingier opponent’s batting mark (.065). Miguel Alfredo has nearly matched those efforts, winning both outings with relative ease and matching Vera’s 18-K total (including 10 in a row versus South Africa). And Pedro Lazo has looked like the venerable Lazo of several years back with two successive relief outings (one save) featuring 9 Ks in 5.2 innings and an opponents’ .150 batting mark. Before Friday’s late-inning meltdown with the Puerto Ricans, Cuban pitchers (mainly bullpen stalwarts Vlad García and Yadier Pedroso) suffered only two mildly bad innings: a four-run uprising by South Africa in a game that was already easily won, and a more crucial lead-surrendering 2-run Spanish rally (eventually cancelled by Peraza’s heroics in Barcelona).
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Even Alfredo Despaigne’s high-profile slugging has not been able to keep Cuba out of a round-two qualification hole.
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But the early joyride came to a sudden and rather unexpected end in Amsterdam on Friday evening. The main culprit was an eighth-inning pitching meltdown on the part of Jonder Martínez and Vladimir García that opened the floodgates on a crucial and heart-breaking Puerto Rican eighth-inning uprising. The Puerto Ricans have themselves been up-and-down in this tournament, losing only to frontrunner Holland in round two but hardly impressing in their narrow one-run victories over Korea and Great Britain. After Eduardo Perez’s squad laced with ex-big leaguers touched up shaky starter Maikel Folch for two early one-run leads, Cuba twice knotted the affair on circuit blasts by Despaigne (number 5) and Pestano (his fourth). But the wheels came off against the middle relievers (Pedroso, Martínez and García) in the fateful top of the eighth when Luis Matos homered off Yadier Pedroso and a pair of insurance runs were gifted by Vlad García via a walk and hit batsman with the bases already jammed. Several late-inning Cuban rallies were thwarted when defensive gems nullified hard smashes by Enríquez, Gourriel and Abreu. In the end it simply wasn’t destined to be Cuba’s night.
Cuba’s upset loss Friday evening has now thrown the Group F race for final-round positions into a mad scramble that remains to be sorted out during the remaining two days of matches. Several scenarios now present themselves and all of them demand a pair of Cuban victories against tough opponents, as well as a dose of outside help from the opposition. Puerto Rico can now clinch either a two-way or three-way first-place tie if it merely escapes unscathed in two remaining games with Venezuela and Nicaragua. The still-spotless Dutch can also assure themselves of no worse than a first-place deadlock if they win their penultimate match tonight in Amsterdam with the Nicaraguans. Cuba has the most difficult road to traverse, despite their early-week dominance. To avoid the third slot the Cubans must win against both Korea (likely but never certain) and the hometown Dutch. And the latter victory must be one in which Lombillo’s forces (with Norge Vera likely drawing the mound assignment) hold the potent Orange to no more than a single tally and score at least five themselves. The reason for the latter stipulation is the fact that with three teams tied at 6-1, the positions will be decided by fewest runs allowed between the three in head-to-head games. So far the Dutch have given up but a single run (to Puerto Rico), the Cubans five (also to Puerto Rico), and the Puerto Ricans seven (against both opponents). The only easy path to first place for the Red Machine is an unlike loss by Puerto Rico (perhaps against Venezuela) that would leave the Cuba-Netherlands game as a winner-take-all affair.
Cuba may still hold an advantage in final round play in Italy (as long as they win at least one of the final two here in order to get there), since both high-pressure tournament experience and depth in pitching might suggest that the islanders own better prospects in games against the likes of Team USA, Australia and either Canada or Chinese Taipei. Cuba has been far more consistent in this tournament to date than has Puerto Rico, and the Dutch—despite numerous fast starts—never seem to hold up from end-to-end against the top level of international competition. It is almost certain that any team out of Group F will have to beat either three or four of the Group G entrants to get to the finals, and history as well as current personnel do not send strong signals that either the Dutch or Puerto Ricans are well prepared to accomplish such a feat.
Cuba simply must capture tonight’s penultimate clash with a so far only moderately impressive Korean club that is little more than a shadow of that country’s Olympic champions and WBC finalists. The Cubans never got their chance in San Diego back in March to revenge a crushing Beijing gold medal loss in which Yulieski Gourriel’s ninth-inning roller up the middle was only mere inches from being the Olympic game-winner. But these Koreans (essentially a crew of military all-stars) don’t have much hitting and have beaten only Great Britain and Nicaragua here in Holland, after barely escaping the opening round with a single win over Sweden. If the Saturday evening match follows form, then it will all come down to the much anticipated showcase Dutch-Cuba game on Sunday afternoon in Rotterdam. The Orangemen have always been a pesky bunch versus the Cubans, though most of the big matches have come down on the side of the perennial world champions. The most recent trio of big Cuban wins at the expense of the Lowlanders have come in the opening round of the 2006 WBC (San Juan), the finals of the 2006 Intercontinental Cup in Taiwan (an extra-inning affair broken up dramatically by Yoandry Urgellés), and this June’s World Port Tournament (actually a game with Cuba’s backup B-level squad featuring current pitchers Miguel Alfredo, Maikel Folch and Freddie Asiel).
Sunday’s game will find the Dutch more highly motivated than ever, given their looming World Cup prospects and their recent successes at the March World Baseball Classic event. There are also other incentives that come into play; no European team has ever knocked off the Cubans in any first-level international tournament, with the exception of the Dutch themselves who earlier pulled off the feat a mere handful of times (Sydney Olympics and 2007 Taiwan World Cup), but then only in meaningless pool play matches. This is likely the final hurrah for a veteran Dutch team (Raily Legito, Sidney de Jong, Danny Rombley, Diegomar Markwell and Bryan Englehardt, among others) that has maintained largely the same personnel for much of a decade, and this same roster (more or less) lately suffered a bitter home-front loss to Cuba’s backup squad in the July World Port affair. That contest was staged in the very same venue in Rotterdam that will now host Sunday’s showdown. That earlier game—it might be noted—was spiced by rough play and a few near bench-emptying scuffles. Come Sunday neither team is likely to be short on highly charged incentives.
Cuba has not often found itself in this position in the past (usually sprinting to the front of the pack and more often than not running the table at international events); yet on a handful of past occasions Cuban squads have indeed responded in dramatic fashion when confronted with such do-or-die circumstances. Most memorable perhaps was the stunning 4-2 victory in San Juan over Puerto Rican big leaguers (after an earlier 12-2 drubbing) that launched a Higinio Vélez managed ball club into the finals of the first World Baseball Classic. A decade back in the Winnipeg-based Pan American Games (also the qualifier for the 2000 Sydney Olympiad), the Cubans under Alfonso Urquiola dropped preliminary matches to both the USA and Canada and then had to rally with a trio of consecutive victories over the Dominicans (quarterfinals), Canadians (semifinals), and Americans (gold medal game) in order to snatch the title. And in 2003 on home turf at Havana’s Latin American Stadium the heavily favorite hosts trailed 2-1 to unheralded Brazil in the bottom of the ninth of the quarterfinal match before Gourriel’s triple and Kendry Morales’s tremendous homer ultimately saved the hour and rescued national pride. So don’t count this team out too early. They may well yet again somehow miraculously survive to battle all the way on to the final toss of what is rapidly proving to be one of World Cup baseball’s most exciting chapters.
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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