|
Recent World Cup Finish Is No Embarrassment for Cuban National Team
by Peter C. Bjarkman
Special for www.baseballdecuba.com
It seems to be an all-too-common story these days. Cuba’s proud national team has yet again ended its quest a single painful step short of the coveted top prize in the latest international baseball tournament. Once annual winners of almost every international competition in sight, vaunted Cuban squads have now come home second-best in back-to-back World Cup events, as well as in last summer’s Beijing Olympics. Perhaps even more disappointing to island fanatics is the fact that for the second straight IBAF World Cup event the once-perennial champions were forced to cede a gold medal to the arch-rival North Americans, thus ending long-standing Cuban domination in the event that stretched throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and also most of this first decade of a new millennium.
 |
Cuba players celebrate the victory versus Canada that put them back in the World Cup finals once again. |
Cubans do not suffer such losses easily. Island disillusionment is seemingly once again palpable enough for celebrated Havana filmmaker Ian Padrón to pen the following lament in a recent on-line blog: “Although the quality of our ballplayers is indisputable, we have lost almost all the major international tournaments of the past three years at all levels, and each new National Series season seems to attract less fan interest. The drop in quality in our national baseball is thus also indisputable, and local stadiums are increasingly empty and also filled with boredom.” Such is the legacy of relentless Cuban winning throughout the decades that apparently now even silver medal triumphs over top professional rivals are bitterly dismissed as profound national disgraces.
But Padrón and thousands if not millions of his compatriots seem to misjudge the nature of today’s international baseball scene. This time around, for example, there was a controversial new tournament format with second round (16 teams) and final round (8 teams) qualifiers divided into two groups, and with only first-place clubs in each division reaching the gold medal showdown. No longer (as in the past) could a team falter in an occasional pool-round contest and then hope to rally down the stretch run during medal-round contests; a single loss in second or third round matches could well slam the door on any team’s title hopes. And yet despite the rare challenges of an odd playoff system (with no traditional quarterfinal or semifinal matches), despite the pitfalls of an exhausting month-long travel schedule spread across the face of Europe (Cuba bounced from Italy to Spain to The Netherlands and then back to Italy, with only a single rest day in a three-week span), and despite the most competitive IBAF field ever (featuring twice as many MLB-affiliated players as the Taiwan event back in 2007), the Cubans nevertheless somehow managed once again to hang in all the way to a prestigious final-match showdown with talent-rich Team USA. And while this might not be satisfaction enough for a spoiled Cuban fandom that now expects total victory virtually every time out, it is nonetheless a boasting point not to be quickly ignored or easily dismissed.
The silver medal outcome was a sharp disappointment, to be sure—for players, Cuban League management, and Cuban fans alike. But even the lopsided 10-5 loss to a heavy-hitting squad of future American big league stars was hardly the disaster that many supporters back home will now likely make it out to be. The truth be told, this year’s silver medal finish was by almost any measure a far greater achievement than all those uninterrupted gold medal romps against inferior amateur competition rung up across most of the past quarter-century. The only three Cuban defeats in fifteen outings (20 games, actually, if the warm-up Italian Baseball Week tournament is added to the ledger) came at the hands of a Puerto Rican squad with six ex-big-leaguers in the starting lineup, and a super-talented American contingent boasting such AAA pro standouts as sluggers Justin Smoak (Rangers) and Pedro Alvarez (Pirates), future Dodgers catching phenom Lucas May, and celebrated mound prospects Todd Redmond (Braves) and Brad Lincoln (Pirates). This was an American squad that veteran Baseball America scribe John Manuel has labeled (in personal correspondence with this writer) as a clear notch above the Team USA contingent which took the bronze medal in last summer’s Beijing Olympics. There may indeed be room for disappointment in this year’s silver medal finish. But there is hardly reason for chest-beating laments or for any renewed cries about an unrealistic sag in Cuban League baseball fortunes.
In brief, this year’s World Cup field was easily the best top-to-bottom paring ever assembled, and the tournament itself was by several measures a close equivalent to the second installment of MLB’s World Baseball Classic staged last March in Tokyo, Mexico, Puerto Rico and California. Over one hundred ballplayers with current MLB affiliations suited up for this fall’s event, and there was also an ample supply of seasoned veterans recently cut loose by the pros but still boasting former big league status (Rubén Gotay, Luis Matos and Alex Cintrón with Puerto Rico and Francisco Cordova and Oscar Robles with Mexico, to cite just a handful). And if comparing the IBAF event with the springtime MLB Classic seems bit of a stretch, consider again what actually occurred during the March showcase event. Numerous frontline big leaguers (with the disappointing Dominican club and underachieving Canadian, American and Puerto Rican squads especially) once again treated the WBC as a spring-training exercised and only seemed to go through the motions, despite all the lip service devoted to patriotic honor and the pride of playing for one’s national flag. The two WBC finalists of 2009 (like the pair in 2006) boasted only a sprinkling of MLB products (those few suiting up for Japan). The latest IBAF World Cup edition may not have featured nearly as many household names, but the clubs were only a small step behind in talent and indisputably miles ahead in on-field motivation. That Team Cuba could again fall only a single rung short of the top spot against such a rich field is certainly to be taken as yet another sign of the continued growth and undiminished strength—rather than any noteworthy decline—in the island’s showcase national pastime.
Cuban fans can also cull numerous added plusses from the 2009 showcase world championship event. For one thing, the island nation’s significant number one IBAF ranking in the sport will now remain secure. A second place finish (with number-two-ranked Korea and number three Japan both failing to make the top sixteen final-round qualifiers) will only mean a significant widening of the Cuban lead. Team USA will likely now creep ahead of the two Asian contenders while only slightly cutting the Cuban’s nearly 800-point first-place margin. Furthermore, a new generation of Cuban stars clearly emerged in Europe this September and stellar performances by the likes of Freddy Asiel Alvarez, Miguel Alfredo González, Leonys Martin and José Dariel Abreu all signal a strong immediate future for domestic league play as well as national team fortunes. And perhaps most important of all (at least in terms of national baseball prestige), the sport’s most remarkable winning streak—a perfect ledger of thirty World Cup appearances and thirty earned medals—has yet again been preserved and extended. When all is said and done, there were no embarrassments worth mentioning to be found anywhere during Team Cuba’s exhausting yet triumphant tour across Europe during September’s latest renewal of Olympic-style international baseball wars.
Cuba’s remarkable half-century IBAF World Cup domination may have lost a bit of luster with the two recent final-game setbacks in Taiwan and Nettuno; but what else realistically should have been expected in the face of such severe upgrading in the levels of competition? Those who see a couple of final-game losses to top-flight American pros as some kind of “death knell” for Cuban baseball glory seem to be asking all the wrong questions. The real facts of value here are the following. Cuba has now played in an even thirty World Cup events without ever finishing lower than third (and only five times settling for either silver or bronze). They thus hold 25 gold medals compared to three for runner-up Venezuela and a mere pair for Team USA. And this year’s event marked the twenty-second straight time (dating back to 1952) the Cubans have either won outright or at least reached the finals.
Where is the embarrassment in such a string of continued triumphs? Where is the collapse of Cuban baseball? And let us ask another question here to put the entire issue into somewhat better perspective. What might be the current status of Team USA if that country were forced to select its entire roster from only the single region of, say, New York City (an equivalent population to that of the Caribbean island) and also if that population suffered a steady stream of potential all-stars being regularly lost to political or economic defections? The question here is not: “Why have Cuban teams fallen from perennial first-place finishers to recent runners-up?” The real question here is: “How have the Cubans still managed to cling to the top rung of the international baseball ladder despite the decade-long introduction of top MLB-affiliated pros and the continued worsening of island economic conditions?”
I have published versions the below table on this website before (and also in my book A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006), but since memories are short (and also because some of our webpage readership is new) it merits repeating once again here, if only to underscore the unquestioned nature of Cuba’s half-century World Cup dominance. It is a récord of relentless winning that can not be found elsewhere in this sport or any other: thirty entries in the IBAF event, 25 gold medal triumphs, not a single tournament without a first, second or third-place medal finish. Talk about dynasty teams in the world of sports—baseball or any other team-based event—and this has to be the unchallenged prime-time example.
Cuba’s Record: 25 Firsts, 3 Seconds (1941, 2007, 2009), 2 Thirds (1944, 1951); nine consecutive titles (1984-2005) and no finish lower that second place since 1952; 301 wins – 33 losses (.901 Pct.). Other Winners: Venezuela (3: 1941, 1944, 1945), USA (2*: 2007, 2009), Colombia (2: 1947, 1965), Dominican Republic (1: 1948), Puerto Rico (1: 1951), Korea (1: 1982), England (1#: 1938). # England’s victory came in a two-country exhibition with American soldiers that is now considered the “first amateur world series” (1938). *Team USA also won the two “alternative” FEMBA-sponsored events in the 1970s in which neither Cuba nor any Asian countries took part.
One unparalleled Cuban winning skein (50 straight top-level international events resulting in either gold medal honors or appearances in the final match) was finally halted in March by an early second-round exit from World Baseball Classic 2009. But another equally impressive string (30 overall World Cup appearances without failing to earn gold, silver or bronze) has now been further extended—at least until the next World Cup reunion two years down the road at some as-yet-undetermined site. With the staging of the next IBAF showcase in late 2011 sixty full years will have passed since the last time when Cuban baseballers attended a World Cup event and didn’t either win the top prize or at least reach the championship finale. In light of such historical domination of the sport it is hard to find any cause for head-hanging among Cuban fans, just as it is equally implausible to deny that Cuba yet remains the true epicenter of international baseball.
Of course Cuban fans will find plenty of faults with this year’s results, as they always inevitably do. There will be much finger pointing at the final game and especially at a pair of early errors by tournament all-star second baseman Héctor Olivera. It will be quickly forgotten that is was the same Olivera whose pair of timely run-producing hits two nights earlier versus Canada lifted Cuba into the title showdown in the first place. The charge will also be made that manager Lombillo turned to Pedro Lazo one time too many when he brought his veteran closer back for the third time in five final-round matches. Again it will be overlooked that it was Lazo’s work against Australia and Canada that kept Cuba squarely in the title hunt throughout the tournament’s final crucial week. Six unearned American runs against Vera and Lazo will be the source of endless complains and ceaseless debate as Cubans play this single game over and over on Havana street corners. Also lamented will be a final pitching breakdown (five straight two-out hits against Lazo and Miguel Alfredo González during the fatal USA sixth-inning uprising) which now unfortunately overshadows for many all the brilliant mound work (especially by Lazo and Miguel Alfredo themselves) that carried Cuba all the way to the finals in the first place.
Of course the truth here is that the final defeat in Nettuno came at the hands of a decidedly better team; this was not at all a case of Cuban failures as much as it was a clear result of a superior Team USA performance. Borrero’s game-tying homer in the home half of the fifth made it interesting for a very brief spell but hardly turned the inevitable tide. Even if Borrero (who quickly turned from hero to goat) had gloved Olivera’s wide throw for a potential rally killing double play a half-frame later, Lazo’s inability to shut down USA batsmen likely would have brought the same defeat in innings that followed. Unearned runs are a central part of the game of baseball; teams that exploit opportunities are teams that win. How many times over the years have the Cubans themselves triumphed by cashing in with a crucial hit or two once the opposition inadvertently opened the door on a fortuitous rally? Lombillo’s forces did precisely that only several nights earlier when a lone first-inning blast by Despaigne versus Australia (off Dushan Ruzic, who pitched a brilliant 3-hit complete game in a losing effort) held up for an unlikely victory, despite the fact that Australia outhit the victors by a wide margin. Sometimes the ball bounces your way and sometimes it simply does not. That is the essence of mankind’s most beautiful and unpredictable sport.
In the end it was timely Team USA hitting and not merely miscues by Olivera or Borrero that ultimately sabotaged the Cuban juggernaut. Yes the Cubans opened the door on a couple of occasions; but in a vast majority of cases over the years (and even over the decades) Cuban pitching has nearly always recovered from such scrapes. This time it simply was not destined for the Baseball Gods to smile only on the Cuban side of the diamond. Keep in mind that his was easily the best top-to-bottom American club ever sent to international competitions. It was a more balanced team than the Longoria-led 2007 bunch in Taiwan or the Beijing bronze medal squad of last August. It was in many ways a more potent club that the all-star laced USA WBC teams of both 2006 and 2009 that played without obvious cohesion or motivation under first Buck Martinez and later Davey Johnson. Cuba didn’t as much self-destruct as simply run out of gas against slightly superior forces.
A disappointing final should also not be allowed to overshadow some truly remarkable Cuban performances along the road to a silver medal triumph. There was first and foremost a dramatic last-minute comeback win over a solid Spanish ball club in Barcelona that featured one of the oddest if not most dramatic home runs in Cuban baseball annals. Peraza’s historic homer—he remains the only player to smack game-winning pinch-hit blasts in his first trips to the plate in both the MLB Classic and IBAF World Cup—stands as perhaps the single most unforgettable play this writer has witnessed in a decade and a half of trailing the Cuban team in international matches. There was also an equally gritty clutch win over the host Dutch club (mainly on the strength of a career-outing by veteran hurler Yulieski González) on their own home field in Rotterdam that lifted Lombillo’s outfit into the thick of the championship hunt. There was also a stellar performance (sparked by Despaigne’s most vital homer among his récord 11 circuit blasts) against the upset-minded Aussies in the final round lid lifter that also kept title hopes alive for the islanders. And above all else there was the superb penultimate effort (a 5-1 win in which Yulieski González ran his perfect tournament récord to 3-0) rung up against potent Canada during the penultimate game that put Cuba back in the gold medal affair yet one more time.
 |
Author Pete Bjarkman with Freddie Cepeda after Cuba’s win over Nicaragua in Haarlem. |
Those who wish to lament a final gold medal game meltdown should here be reminded just how lucky Cuba actually was throughout this event. A strange and entirely novel format for determining this year’s finalists left many obstacles along the path to the gold medal game. Cuba survived some of those obstacles with clutch play (such as timely long-balls by Peraza versus Spain, Yulieski Gourriel versus Nicaragua, and Despaigne versus Australia); but Cuba also got by some other hurdles with some significant help from Lady Luck. The Cubans needed a minimum of three victories during final-round action staged in Italy, and they were certainly charmed in their hard-fought outing with Australia. Those who complain that the Red Machine only lost to the USA because of unearned runs should remember how the tables were turned in the final-round opener in Grosseto. Cuba was outhit and outpitched in that one but lived on nonetheless largely because Dushan Ruzic made a single first inning mistake by hanging a melon-sized fastball to Alfredo Despaigne. And more importantly still, had Group E favorite Team USA not somehow managed to drop their opener with Venezuela in Germany (13-9 in extra innings via a grand slam off the bat of Dirimo Chavez), the American s and Cubans would have played in the same round-two Group F (Netherlands). That likely would have meant a USA-Canada finale, with Cuba left licking its wounds against Australia in the bronze medal consolation match.
Aside from the obvious elements of luck, there were also plenty of top-notch performances coming from the Cuban camp. Alfredo Despaigne (.420 BA, 11 HRs, 22 Hits, 17 RBI) was the tournament’s top individual star with his récord-setting home run exploits; Despaigne’s 11 homers erased the earlier Cuban World Cup mark (also an overall tournament récord) of nine stroked by Orestes Kindelán in the 1990 event at Edmonton. Héctor Olivera (who hit .436 and was elected a tournament all-star at second base) also finally fulfilled much of the promise that has been slowly emerging over the past several international seasons. In youngster José Dariel Abreu (top batsman in the Italian Baseball Week preliminaries) Cuba has also seemingly at long last found the slugging first baseman that national team management and Cuban fans have hoped for since the departure of Orestes Kindelán. Ariel Pestano (.298 BA and four homers) was as solid as ever in what may well have been his swan song outing. And little-used Yosvani Peraza twice came up big (with the game-winning homer versus Spain and a game-deciding three-run double versus Holland) in precisely the role he was selected to fulfill.
For all the slugging on the part of Despaigne and company, it was in the end the Cuban pitching that carried the team in all of the biggest tournament victories. Especially encouraging were the performances of youngsters Miguel Alfredo González (1.83 ERA, 3-0 W-L, team best 26 Ks) and Freddy Asiel Alvarez (0.56 ERA, 2-0 W-L, 11 Ks with only 4 BB). Miguel Alfredo made his mark with a stellar outing in Barcelona (ten consecutive Ks versus South Africa which was a Cuba World Cup récord and barely missed matching Burt Hooton’s 1970 all-time mark) and then continued to strike out opposing batters with considerable regularity (with a 26-5 K/BB ratio). Freddy Asiel not only flashed brilliance in two games in particular (victorious starts versus South Korea and Great Britain, the latter a complete-game two-hitter), but also never had a truly bad outing (including a brief stint in the gold medal match) throughout the entire month in Europe. Even in a lost cause against the Americans (where he worked the final 2.1 innings without yielding a base hit) Freddy Asiel seemed to be the staff’s most effective hurler against the best opposition.
Cuba’s veteran hurlers also flashed occasional brilliance across the past month. Yulieski González (2.14 ERA, 3-0 W-L, 20 Ks versus 5 BB) enjoyed his best international outings ever—in the two must-win outings that closed rounds two (versus Holland) and three (versus Canada). With Norberto González no longer on the scene, Yulieski emerged in Europe as the southpaw mainstay that any championship pitching rotation so desperately requires. And Pedro Lazo (perfect 0.00 ERA in five outings, with 18 Ks, but 2 walks, and a .158 opponent’s batting average) also reemerged as the dominant bullpen force of several seasons back. It is possible to lament Lazo’s inabilities to get outs in the single disastrous inning that crushed Cuban hopes against the Americans. But it must be remembered that Cuba was actually in the finals only thanks to Lazo’s two highly effective clutch game-saving outings against Australia and Canada in two must-win final-round contests. As an overall staff, the Cuban’s 1.70 team ERA was the best of the entire tournament.
As so many times in the past, the cries for drastic reform are now again filling the air on street corners in Havana, Santiago, Matanzas and around the entire island. Some changes in league structure have already been proposed for the new season and these will likely be seen as knee-jerk reactions to another gold medal loss. But those proposed changes were already put in place months earlier and are hardly reactionary in nature, although many will take them (if they do occur) as fallout from the recent tournament “failures.”. A few suggestions for overhaul recently committed to print are certainly worth contemplating. Filmmaker Ian Padrón, for one, has proposed improvements in the Cuban baseball scene which have plenty of merit; Padrón’s recommendations include making such memorabilia as team banners and t-shirts available for purchase at island stadiums, improvements in stadium security and sanitation, and amplified island newspaper and internet coverage of National Series action. But the kinds of changes Padrón suggests have more to do with the island’s baseball ambiance than they do with any obvious means of rectifying assumed dips in national team talent or performance.
Cuban baseball will almost assuredly remain a substantial force in the international sport for years if not decades to come. This will be the case despite the worsening island economic conditions that not only impact on the quality of National Series play but also result in a steadily increasing number of ballplayer defections which thin out but never seem to deplete available talent. But if Cuba remains traditionally strong, its teams will never again win every single year in the major venues—anymore than any “dynasty” franchise like the Yankees or Dodgers or Cardinals can be expected to win every year in the professional major leagues. International talent is now simply too advanced and the international game is taken too seriously elsewhere for the opposition to ever again be the kind of understaffed amateur outfits that the Cubans where once used to encountering in these events. Cuban teams are now at long last truly playing in the “big time” and thus island eyes now have to be set upon a far different level of expectation.
There must indeed now be a change in Cuban baseball circles. But this is not the change that so many island voices have once again been clamoring for. Despite possible small improvements that might result from minor tinkering (such as a compressed National Series with fewer teams and more intense competition), there is no need to drastically overhaul the island’s baseball structure. The current system not only entertains fans at home with winter season league play in all provinces, but it continues to produce national squads now able to hold their own with major league professionals. I for one thus applaud this week’s announcement in Havana that the upcoming National Series #49 (scheduled to open November 1 and run through late March) will adhere to precisely the same structure as last winter’s highly successful 16-team and two-division format.
What must change instead is the Cuban fandom itself. It is the fans and not the league that require a major readjustment in their understanding and appreciation of international baseball realities as they now exist in a new millennium. For decades Cuban diehards have been crying out to see their heroes compete against the best the sport has to offer. Now that this dream has finally become a reality, the spoiled Cuban fandom must learn to accept inevitable defeat alongside coveted victory. They must appreciate national teams that play well against the very best and not be emotionally crushed simply because their beloved clubs no longer come home from every outing with unblemished récords and all-too-easy triumphs. This is the price of now playing in the “major leagues.” Cuban teams are not now occasionally losing in major events like the World Cup and World Baseball Classic because the right roster choices were not made, or because of this particular managerial decision or that particular pitching or fielding miscue. They are losing from time to time because the opponents are simply better on certain given days. Cuban fans must now accept (and take pride in) smaller victories and let go of a bygone era crammed with often-meaningless triumphs against totally inferior foes.
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.
|