BaseballdeCuba El Sitio Web del Deporte Nacional de Cuba

With the recent launching of calendar year 2011 Cuba’s National Series has already turned the corner on the first full third of an historic Golden Anniversary season. Across the 30-game mark of a 90-contest campaign Cuban aficionados have so far experienced an entertaining spectacle that clearly promises to be memorable, not only for its half-century milestone status but also for its various assaults on cherished island record book standards.

Home runs have been flying out of Cuban League ballparks in unprecedented numbers during a first month in which excessive offense has clearly been the order of the day. Four sluggers – Yoennis Céspedes (Granma), José Dariel Abreu (Cienfuegos), Alexander Guerrero (Las Tunas) and Donald Duarte (Pinar del Río) – are currently maintaining a long-ball-smashing pace that could seriously threaten a league record 32 homers pounded out by Alfredo Despaigne (Granma) only two seasons back. Despaigne himself has now rejoined the fray after sitting out the first month while traveling to South Africa with a Cuban international youth fair delegation. A hefty total of seven batsmen are currently maintaining a 30-homer full-season’s pace, and a half-dozen more are presently stroking the ball above the elevated touchstone .400-average plateau. Quality or even adequate pitching – scarce enough in recent Cuban campaigns – has so far in National Series #50 appeared to be in even shorter supply than is typical for an admittedly power-oriented island national pastime.

While league pitching generally has been relegated to a distant backseat to date, hurlers have so far not been entirely absent from the headlines. Lanky Pinar right-hander Vladimir Baños not only tossed the season’s first no-hit masterpiece in late December but in the process fell painfully short of authoring what would have been only the second “perfect game” in a half-century of island baseball annals. Two distinguished league hurlers – Miguel Alfredo González (Habana Province) and Noelvis Entenza (Cienfuegos) – are so far maintaining sub-2.00 ERA ledgers. And with eight saves under his belt at the season’s one-third milepost, Duniel Ibarra (Cienfuegos) is still maintaining a pace that could bring him within striking distant of the all-time league single-season standard of 25 (equaled only two years back by Vladimir García of Ciego de Avila).

One realm in which records will remain safe – both this season and perhaps for many to come – is in the area of lengthy league games, since Cuban domestic baseball has now for the first time adopted a controversial extra-inning tie-breaker system first introduced in the summer of 2008 for Olympic-style international tournament events. This novel extra-inning format is now widely referred to in the Cuban media as the “Schiller Rule” – a name I myself actually coined on the eve of the rule’s initial use at the Beijing Games (with reference to then-IBAF president Harvey Schiller who oversaw its conception). It involves the automatic placing of runners on first and second base to begin each half inning of extra-inning play. While this strange innovation (one that runs entirely counter to baseball’s unique claim of being a non-time-clock sport) may very well soon find its way into the North American majors for the express convenience of television schedules, its introduction in Cuba has had quite another motive. Since it is now the standard in international tournament play, its utilization in domestic games is strictly in line with Cuban baseball’s overriding goal of conditioning league players for possible national team experience somewhere down the road.

While a handful of new entries in the island record books seems almost certain before the current historic season closes its doors in April, there are numerous memorable past performances that are highly likely to withstand almost any assaults by current and future league stars. And most of these have absolutely nothing at all to do with any rule innovations limiting the length to which league games might drag on. Some also have little enough to do with seemingly abnormal short Cuban seasons, or with the rather primitive nature (at least by today’s North American major league standards) of Cuba’s natural grass playing surfaces and prevalent sunlit daytime venues. A few of these record-book oddities are further distinguished by having preciously little parallel anywhere within the world’s top contemporary professional or amateur baseball leagues.

Osmani Urrutia outdid both Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby while averaging .400-plus for a 5-season stretch.

This special golden anniversary season marking the half-century milestone of Cuba’s socialist “revolutionary” baseball seems the perfect occasion for reflecting here on several of the most incomparable individual batting and hurling achievements from the past five decades of domestic island play. In a follow-up article I will also review a similar list of remarkable achievements by Team Cuba stars during post-1962 international tournaments. But the focus in this initial essay remains on the island league action that now celebrates its 50-season milestone. My colleague Daniel de Malas (writing in Spanish) has recently provided a similar discussion of landmark feats on his Havana Radio COCO website, and many of the events in that earlier piece overlap with the ones discussed here. But while de Malas focuses on a listing of “los records irrompibles del béisbol cubano” (the most unbreakable records of Cuban baseball), I in turn attempt here to underscore what I see as an even dozen truly unparalleled individual achievements in both the hitting and pitching departments. In the end de Malas and I agree that most of these marks hold their own against anything that lengthier and more celebrated big league annals have to offer.

Bjarkman’s Top Dozen Individual Cuban League Batting Performances

Such rare events as Alexei Bell’s pair of single-frame grand slams, Bell’s own earlier two homers in an inning or three hits in an inning (both in post-season action), Osmani Urrutia’s five-year .400-plus batting string, Ibrahim Fuentes’s skein of 14 uninterrupted base knocks, and Urrutia’s single-season .469 batting mark all find few if any true parallels in big-league or Japanese League annals. And several other rare Cuban League batting phenomena also measure up to their American and National League counterparts once the much shorter Cuban seasons are taken into account. Among these latter achievements we find Kindelán 487 career circuit blasts (and 1511 RBI), the 13 triples stroked in 1969 by Wilfredo Sánchez, and Alfredo Despaigne’s consecutive 30-homer campaigns. One beauty of the diamond sport is that the rarest of statistical oddities seem to pop up time and again just about everywhere the game is played.

Osmani Urrutia Compiles a Five-Season .400-Plus Batting Average. Between 2001 and 2005 the pudgy right-handed swinging Las Tunas outfielder earned an unparalleled five consecutive National Series hitting crowns, a feat reminiscent of Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby on the early 20th century big league scene. Across that string of productive seasons Urrutia posted marks of .431, 408, .421, .469 and .385 – a rarified composite .422 average. Hornsby boasts the only comparable MLB string, having batted an aggregate .402 over the first five of his six consecutive National League crowns in the early twenties (1921-1925). While it is true that Urrutia’s seasons were roughly 40 percent shorter than Hornsby’s, it is also noteworthy that the National Leaguer kept his head above the .400 plateau in three of five campaigns (compared to four for the Cuban star) and also batted an composite 20 percentage points lower than did Urrutia. There is no claim here that Osmani Urrutia was a better hitter than the famed big leaguer whom most consider the best right-handed swinger ever. But there certainly can be a claim made that Urrutia and Hornsby now share a comparable hitting spree matched nowhere else in baseball’s glorious history.

Alexei Bell Specializes in Grand Slam Home Run Slugging. Alexei Bell’s “opening day” of 2008 ended in disaster when he was hit in the face by a Yunieski Maya fastball – an injury that not only ruined the remainder of Bell’s season but also kept him off national team rosters for both WBC II and the 2009 IBAF World Cup tournament. But Bell’s “opening day” exactly one year later launched him to certain baseball immortality. On November 4, 2009 Santiago’s “Toy Cannon” somehow achieved the almost inconceivable when he smacked back-to-back grand slams in the opening frame of the season’s initial contest. With but two swings of the bat Bell entered the most exclusive club in baseball annals: Fernando Tatis had earlier pulled off the same feat for MLB’s St. Louis Cardinals back in 1999, but not on ceremonial Opening Day, and not on the season’s first two trips to the plate. Bell’s achievement is even rarer still when we recall the Santiago outfielder’s uncanny knack for single-inning feats. A little more than two years earlier (April 18, 2007) Bell stroked two homers (not grand slams) in the same frame of a post-season contest with Industriales; no big leaguer has ever done this, either league playoff games or World Series matches. And a mere year later (April 5, 2008) the same Bell collected three base knocks in a single frame of yet another playoff match, this time versus Villa Clara. Three hits in a single frame has been accomplished twice in the majors – by Gene Stephens and Johnny Damon – yet has never been witnessed during post-season action. Two additional notes seem appropriate here. Bell’s three single-inning batting feats all transpired in the exact same ballpark – his home field at Guillermón Moncada Stadium. And for good measure Bell ended National Series #49 with a record seven grand slams during the 90-game campaign; the big league record is a mere six (Don Mattingly in 1987 and Travis Hafner in 2006) across 162 American League contests.

Alfredo Despaigne Posts Back-to-Back 30-Homer Seasons. Breaking Bell’s one-season-old mark with his 32 circuit blasts in 2009, then nearly duplicating the feat with 31 the following year, Granma’s Despaigne became the first to top the 30-homer ceiling twice in National Series action. Orestes Kindelán also banged out 30 (miraculously in only 63 contests) during a shorter 1986 Selective Series season. But to date Despaigne remains the only slugger to climb above 30 in consecutive National Series outings, and projecting his short-season numbers over the typical 162-game major league schedule, his feat might easily be equated to a pair of 55 homer MLB campaigns. But given the fact that Alfredo Despaigne, José Dariel Abreu and Yulieski Gourriel all cracked the 30-mark last winter (National Series #49), it is reasonable to speculate that this particular slugging record probably will not remain in the record books for very much longer.

Little known Cuban Leaguer Ibrahim Fuentes owns a 14-straight hitting string never matched in major league action.

Ibrahim Fuentes Strings Together 14 Consecutive Base Hits. Even the most devoted Cuban ball fans likely have little familiarity with Ibrahim Fuentes, a role-playing Granma outfielder who batted only .259 over a rather insignificant 11-season career. But Fuentes had one brief moment in the sunlight during the 1988-1989 National Series (the very year Orestes Kindelan posted the league’s only triple crown batting performance); it came when the lefty swinger managed to string together base knocks in 14 consecutive trips to the plate. The modern-era big league standard remains a mere 12, achieved in July 1952 (in only two games) by Detroit Tigers first baseman Walt Dropo. Fuentes enjoyed a career year in 1989 with his part-time play, posting a.333 average (34 hits in 102 AB). But more than a third of his safeties came in one short hot streak during which he accomplished something never matched by even a single major leaguer.

Antonio Pacheco Amasses 2,356 Lifetime Base Hits. Pacheco played in the lengthy shadow of Omar Linares and also of his own teammate Orestes Kindelán. But over the two decades that he graced Cuban baseball, Santiago’s all-star second baseman made a huge (and often rather quiet) dent in the island’s record books. Today Pacheco (currently field manager of his former Santiago club) ranks within the career top ten lists for seven different offensive categories: base hits (first), total bases (third behind Kindelán and Linares), RBIs (third, again trailing Kindelán and Antonio Muñoz), doubles (third), sacrifice flies (third), total at-bats (fifth), and runs scored (seventh). But it is his base hits record which remains the stellar achievement of a 22-season resume; and it is also that single record which is likely to stand for some considerable time to come, at least until Yulieski Gourriel (currently with 1131 in 9 campaigns) has at least another decade under his belt.

Orestes Kindelán Slugs 487 Career Home Runs. One of the biggest disappointments of island baseball lore was the failure by Kindelán to reach the milestone 500 homer plateau – a situation that transpired when the bulky Santiago DH/first baseman was dispatched (along with Linares and Pacheco) to Japan for a coaching assignment near career’s end. At the time Kindelán might well have had two semi-productive seasons remaining and lacked only a baker’s dozen round trippers to reach the magic circle. But it was not to be and Orestes would thus have to settle for a near-triple-digit lead over the only other pair of Cuban sluggers to reach the 400 plateau (Lázaro Junco with 405 and Omar Linares with 404). And then, of course, there is always the issue of aluminum bats: all but 50 of Kindelán’s circuit clouts were struck with medal weapons. (But then again, were the aluminum clubs of Kindelán and Linares any more of a true advantage than the steroids used by Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds?) Kindelán’s final totals might impress those fixated on MLB statistics, but his career total of 6488 official Abs (one HR/13.3 Abs) left him in very rarified company. Compare the totals of several notable MLB home run sluggers: Mark McGuire (one HR/10.6 Abs), Babe Ruth (one HR/11.7 Abs), Barry Bonds (one HR/12.9 Abs); Harmon Killebrew (one HR/14.2 Abs), Mickey Mantle (one HR/15.1 Abs), Hank Aaron (one HR/16.3 Abs), Willie Mays (one HR/16.4 Abs), and Frank Robinson (one HR/17.1 Abs).

Omar Linares Builds a Lifetime .644 Slugging Percentage. A decade ago Omar Linares was almost universally considered the best ballplayer outside the major leagues to be found anywhere on the planet. While his statistical legacy may soon be challenged by contemporary sluggers like Alfredo Despaigne (with a .637 slugging average after a half-dozen seasons), Yulieski Gourriel and José Dariel Abreu, El Niño still stands at or near the top of the pack in most Cuban career slugging departments. His lifetime batting average (.368, first) and homer totals (404) are most likely to grab the bulk of our attention, but it is nonetheless the slugging percentage (total bases dived by Abs) that must be considered the greatest Linares landmark. Only one big leaguer ever surpassed Omar’s career figure (Babe Ruth at .690). The remainder of the top five MLB bashers includes Williams (.634), Gehrig (.632), Foxx (.609), and the steroid-aided Barry Bonds (.607).

Alexei Bell’s pair of one-inning grand slams is Bjarkman’s choice for Cuba’s most remarkable all-time batting feat.

Alexei Bell Collects 111 RBIs in a Single National Series. Forty-six National Series of various lengths came and went without a single slugger crossing the triple-digit RBI plateau; thirty-five campaigns slipped by without anyone even topping 80 in that department. Then Bell broke through with the first 30-HR and 100-RBI campaign on record. The home run mark has already been surpassed twice by Despaigne (and equaled by Gourriel and Abreu) a mere two seasons later. And Yulieski Gourriel also entered the charmed circle with 105 runs knocked home in last winter’s National Series #49. The new emphasis on wooden bat slugging (along with a much discussed and lamented tailspin in pitching talent) may well mean that the 100-RBI campaign may not remain such a rarity for very much longer. But for the moment Alexei Bell still stands at the top of the heap as the unparalleled league record holder.

Wilfredo Sánchez Legs Out 13 Triples in a Single Season. Triples have been almost entirely lost within today’s cookie-cutter-mold big league ballparks, but they are much more frequent in Cuban stadiums, even in very recent seasons. Chief Wilson’s big-league record of 36 (1912) today seems unapproachable; only a handful of MLB stars (Willie Mays, George Brett, Willie Wilson, Cristian Guzman and Lance Johnson) were able to reach 20 or more in the entire second half of the 20th century. By contrast, Wilfredo Sánchez’s mark has been toyed with on six different occasions in the past decade, and Yasser Gómez (1999), Adriano García (2005) and Ariel Sánchez (2008) have all missed tying the record by only a single three-bagger. Yet across 36 seasons of Cuban revolutionary baseball Wilfredo remained the only fleet-footed batsman capable of legging out more than nine triples in any single National Series campaign. The fame of Wilfredo Sánchez perhaps rests most heavily on the fact that he was the first Cuban Leaguer to reach 1000 base hits (he now stands only fifth in that career category). Perhaps the “unlucky number” 13 three-baggers of 1969 were an even more noteworthy accomplishment for the legend still known on the island as “El Hombre Hit” (“The Hit Man”). After all, the mark is now the oldest single-season batting standard still untouched in the Cuban League record books.

Osmani Urrutia Compiles a .469 Batting Average for a Single Season. Urrutia’s five-year reign as Cuba’s most adept batsman peaked with an (admittedly short) 2004 season when he posted numbers unparalleled on any big league diamond. While the .400 hitter has become an extinct species on the big league scene over the past seven decades, he has remained a rather common citizen in the Cuban League, with the league leader reaching that elevated plateau seven times in the past decade alone. And yet on only four occasions has any other batsmen come even close to Osmani Urrutia’s National Series high water mark: Cheito Rodríguez (.446 in 1988), Omar Linares (.442 in 1990 and .446 in 1993), and Michel Enríquez (.447 in 2006). But even those rare onslaughts have all fallen considerably short (20 percentage points or more) of Osmani Urrutia’s truly elevated numbers. Nap Lajoie’s .426 (1901) remains the highest major league mark of the entire 20th century, while the 19th century standard is .440 by Hugh Duffy (1894).

Rey Isaac Builds a 37-Game Hitting Streak. Rey Isaac was the Tommy Holmes of Cuban baseball; take away the lengthy 1995 hitting streak and few even in Cuba would remember much about him only a dozen years after he hung up his spikes. Isaac logged 16 seasons as a Santiago outfielder and rang up reasonably impressive numbers: a .316 career BA, 101 homers, 1433 total base knocks. He even earned occasional national team appearances but nonetheless was never a true idol in the Oriente, always overshadowed on an offense-minded team headlining Kindelán, Pacheco, Gabriel Pierre, Fausto Alvarez, Evenecer Godinez, Manuel Benavides, Rolando Meriño and Pedro Poll. When Isaac strung together his hitting streak of 37 consecutive games in 1995 (the same number that Tommy Holmes of the Boston Braves posted in 1945, for what was then a modern-era National League record) he overhauled a nine-year-old Cuban mark set by Lázaro Vargas. Vargas had reached 31 games for Industriales back in 1986 and thus remains the only other Cuban hitter to surpass thirty. Over fifteen-plus subsequent seasons no one has seriously threatened to challenge either Isaac or Vargas in this special category of batting consistency.

Three Sluggers Smash Four Home Runs in a Single Game. What has been witnessed only a half dozen times in more than a century of big league action has occurred on but three separate occasions in Cuba’s own half-century-old league, and two of the three perpetrators were highly unlikely candidates for the distinction. The first Cuban Leaguer to smash four round trippers in the same contest was Camagüey’s Leonel Moa, who pulled it off against Granma on December 10, 1989 in the victim’s home ballpark. Moa was a substantial enough slugger who still ranks twelfth on the career long-ball list, although the righty-swinger never captured an individual single-season title in HR department. The feat was repeated on December 12, 1995 in Matanzas (versus Camagüey) by Alberto Diaz, a far less likely candidate who wacked only 67 total homers over a full 16-season career. The third and last to turn the trick was the legendary Omar Linares whose moment came not in the National Series but in the short-season Revolutionary Cup (at home in Captain San Luis Stadium versus Villa Clara on April 8, 1997). A single true irony linking these three historic events is the fact that a single umpire, Nelson Díaz, was on the field (twice and second and behind the plate for the Linares game) in all three memorable matches.

Bjarkman’s Top Dozen-Plus Cuban League Individual Pitching Performances

In a recent report on this web page (the one concerning the Vladimir Baños masterpiece last month in Pinar del Río) I have already commented at some length about the seeming sparseness of Cuban League no-hit games when compared with major league equivalents. Big league campaigns have averaged nearly three such rarities per year while the Cuban National Series (along with another couple dozen shorter extra “second season” tournaments) has witness only fifty during a full half-century lifespan. Of course the greater length of the North American pro seasons brings the equation much closer to balancing out. And the same is true of most other remarkable island pitching feats. Pedro Lazo’s career victory totals or José Ibar single 20-win campaign seem at initial glance to pale numerically next to much heftier big league statistical standards. But the single-game strikeout mark of Faustino Corrales or the career ERA standard of José Antonio Huelga in turn have no professional league parallels. And it took the Cuban League only a handful of sessions to log a double-no-hit feat (Aquino Abreu in 1966) that big league baseball has witnessed but once in more than a century of almost double-length seasons.

No big leaguer has ever equaled the 22 strikeout game once authored by Pinar’s Faustino Corrales.

Faustino Corrales Strikes Out 22 Batters in a Single Nine-Inning Game. Fans genuinely in the know about Cuban baseball will tell you that of all the pitchers Cuba has produced in the past several decades, it was Faustino Corrales who might have had the greatest big league prospects. A crafty southpaw with top control and a blazing fastball is hard to find anywhere on the planet. Corrales was rarely able to occupy the center stage of Cuban baseball, infrequently making the national team roster and laboring in Pinar behind such stalwarts as Contreras and Lazo. But on December 20, 2000 he accomplished a milestone never witnessed in the professional “big-time” when he gunned down 22 Holguín batters, breaking the Cuban single-game strikeout mark of 20 (set in 1969 by Habana’s Santiago “Changa” Mederos). The top big-league total of 20 in a nine-inning contest has been achieved on four occasions, twice by Roger Clemens and once each by Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson. The all-time big league standard of 21 (Tom Cheney for Washington during a 16-inning stint in 1962) itself falls one short of Faustino’s extraordinary full-game achievement. And it should be noted here that Cheney’s extra-inning record also misses the mark of the 24 Ks achieved back in 1977 during a similar 16-inning outing by yet another Pinar flamethrower, Rogelio García (then pitching for the team known as Vegueros).

Aquino Abreu Tosses Back-to-Back Hitless Games. Perhaps the most extraordinary big league pitching feat remains the 1938 consecutive no-hit games tossed by otherwise undistinguished Cincinnati Reds southpaw Johnny Vander Meer. If not for those two outings Vander Meer would likely be nothing more than a blip on baseball’s historical radar. The same might be said for the slim and stylish Cuban right-hander who tossed a pair of hitless masterpieces at the dawn of the post-revolution Cuban National Series. In his 14-season sojourn Abreu lost more than he won (63-65) while nonetheless compiling a rather impressive career ERA (2.26) during what might be viewed as Cuba’s modern-age dead-ball epoch. The two masterpieces (while laboring for the Centrales ballclub) were quite ironically the first such games in Cuban League history and came nine days apart in January 1966 (National Series #5). They were enough to earn Abreu a most special niche not only on his native island but anywhere else in baseball’s extensive annals.

José Ibar Logs 20 Victories in a Single National Series.Twenty victories in a single major league campaign is an admirable individual achievement, but hardly the stuff of legend, since it happens (often a couple times) in just about each and every season. But before 1998 no Cuban League pitcher had ever reached the mark in either National Series campaigns (which have ranged from as few as 27 games to as many as 99 games in length) or Selective Series seasons (which were normally 60 games for much of their 20-year history). The top mark was Braudilio Vinent’s 19 successes in 1973. José finally pushed lifted bar a notch with his 20-2 ledger in National Series #37. While the stout Habana right-hander entered the record books that spring with a single-season mark of 20, it might also be noted that Cuban career stats also include post-season events. Reeling off a perfect 4-0 ledger during his team’s sojourn in the quarterfinals and semis, Ibar actually added a 24-2 line to his career profile by the end of the 1997-98 festivities.

Pedro Luis Lazo Sets the Mark for Lifetime Victories. Lazo walked away from the Cuban baseball scene only last month as the winningest pitcher in island annals and one of Cuba’s most effective all-time bullpen closers on the international tournament scene. Choosing to remain at home while illustrious teammates José Contreras (in 2003) and Yunieski Maya (in 2010) left the domestic club for major league gold, Lazo slowly but surely climbed into the pages of the Cuban League record book, overhauling Jorge Luis Valdés in the victory column in National Series #47, falling one short of the charmed 250 circle by the end of his penultimate campaign (in National Series #48), and finally extending his new mark to 257 (against 136 defeats) in the swan song campaign of National Series #49. The “Cuban Skyscraper” will be best remembered outside the island for his dominant international performances as a closer (especially at the inaugural MLB World Baseball Classic), but back home in Pinar del Río famous #99 logged enough innings as a fearsome staff ace to establish a milestone that will perhaps take decades to overhaul. The only challenger currently in sight is the ageless Carlos Yanes (Isla de la Juventud), but at his current rate of efficiency Yanes will have to remain active at least four more season (when he would be fifty years of age) to accumulate the needed 25 victories required to match Pedro Lazo.

Maels Rodríguez Achieves Consecutive 200-Plus Strikeout Seasons. Rodríguez (before his premature career collapse due to injury in 2003) owned the greatest arm and most devastating heater this writer has ever seen. Unlucky shoulder damage and simultaneous overuse of a fragile arm in the heat of the 2002 post-season pennant chase quickly and tragically brought all that to an close – but not before a remarkable moment in the sun. Maels exploded on the Cuban scene in the early 2000s with a 100-m.p.h. “heater” used to gun down 263 enemy batters in 2001 (178.1 innings) and 219 more in 2002 (165.0 innings). In the second of these two remarkable campaigns Maels also paced the circuit in bases on balls, something not at all rare for such a loose-armed flamethrower. Nonetheless the league leader in walks in this case produced nearly three times more Ks than free passes. Find me a big league hurler who has ever pulled off that trick.

Maximiliano Gutiérrez Posts a String of 46.1 Consecutive Scoreless Innings. The remarkable scoreless string posted by Maximiliano Gutiérrez for Vegueros in 1978 is more than likely the most untouchable mark in the Cuban League record book. Yet this is one Cuban League oddity that doesn’t quite measure up to its big league counterpart – Orel Hershiser’s 59.1-inning skein of 1988. The unmatched Hershiser string of whitewash innings came at season’s end and barely edged the 58-inning dry spell authored by another Los Angeles Dodgers ace (Don Drysdale) a full two decades earlier. But if Gutiérrez isn’t in quite the same league (excusing the obvious pun here) with either Drysdale or Hershiser, his eye-popping record is nonetheless probably one of the least likely candidates for future duplication on the island, especially given the noteworthy offensive orientation of modern-era Cuban play. The chain of shutout frames also contributed mightily toward Gutiérrez claiming the league ERA crown (1.37) during National Series #17.

Yulieski González Dominates with a Spotless 15-0 National Series Season. Crafty Habana Province southpaw Yulieski González has been a top ace on the league’s strongest pitching staff over the past half-dozen years, joining Yadier Pedroso, Jonder Martínez and Miguel Alfredo González to provide manager Esteban Lombillo with a quartet of frontline national team arms. But two years back Yulieski was more than simply one of the league’s headliners; González actually proved invincible while outdoing the previous record for clean ledgers (12-0 by Jorge Luis Valdés, with the Henequeneros ballclub of 1992). A sad footnote to the record performance came only two months later when González pitched so poorly at the Haarlem Honkbal Week tournament in Europe that he was dropped from that summer’s Beijing Olympic Games roster.

Mael Rodríguez Records a December 1999 Perfect Game Performance. While a “perfect game” pitching performance remains truly rare on major league diamonds, the phenomenon is literally unique in the history of Cuban baseball. MLB fans witnessed two such gems last season alone – and four during the past decade – while Cuban League play has provided only a single such rarity among its current collection of 51 no-hit, no-run affairs. The trick was turned for the first and only time by Sancti Spíritus phenom Maels Rodríguez when he mesmerized Las Tunas batters (December 22, 1999) on the home field in José Huelga Memorial Stadium. That moment of true pitching immortality arrived for Maels during the same heady campaign in which he also captured his first strikeout crown (tied with teammate Yovani Aragón at 177) and (for good measure) became the first Cuban clocked at 100-plus m.p.h. during an official league contest.

José Antonio Huelga Maintains a Career 1.50 Earned Run Average. The greatest tragedy of Cuban baseball undoubtedly was the premature loss of early-seventies Sancti Spíritus ace José Huelga (killed in an automobile accident on July 4, 1974, after only eight all-too-brief league seasons). Huelga might well have been Cuba’s greatest pitching genius ever – including all those big leaguers (Pascual, Cuéllar, Luque) and blackball aces (Bragaña, Méndez, Dihigo) of the pre-revolution professional epoch. “The Hero of Cartegena” holds a most special niche in island lore for his two unforgettable international performances posted during playoff contests with Team USA at the 1970 Amateur World Series. But his legacy may actually depend most heavily on a truly microscopic career ERA number, despite the ironic fact that this number was compiled without ever claiming even a single National Series crown in the most valuable of all pitching departments. The mastery that Huelga held over his career tenure is also, however, demonstrated by a pair of stats equally astounding and equally unapproachable by future mound aces. His career total of hits permitted per each nine innings pitched is a mere 5.73, and his nine long balls surrendered across 871.1 innings means that Huelga allowed a lone homer for every 97 innings logged. Huelga’s career span may indeed have been short yet the skimpy numbers he produced are truly almost “beyond the pale” (or at least beyond normal comprehension).

Ihosvani Gallegos Posts a Single-Season 0.37 Earned Run Average. No, this is not a typo. Gallego permitted but three earned runs over the 72.1 inning he labored in 1972. Only one big league hurler after 1900 (Dutch Leonard at 0.96 in 1914) has ever dipped below one earned-run per frame for an entire campaign – the low-water-mark in the live-ball era (post 1920) is Bob Gibson’s remarkable 1.12 in 1968’s “year of the pitcher.” Cuban League leaders have come in below the 1.00 standard a remarkable 15 times over 49 previous National Series pennant races (and one additional time during the Selective Series). Yet Gallegos’ effort for Industriales in 1972 is truly off the charts even by Cuban standards. Next best – the 0.46 mark by Omar Carrero (78 innings) for Ganaderos four years later. Carrero himself might deserve something of the nod here, however, since that same 1976 spring and summer he also rang up a 0.62 figure (116.1 innings) while hurling for Camagüey in the slightly longer Selective Series.

Carlos Yánes Reaches the 200 Plateau in Both Victories and Defeats. Yanes is hardly Cuba’s most talented pitcher – not even close. But (at age 46 and competing in season number 28) he is certainly the most durable and thus a true phenomenon in the Cuban League record books. With his 233-241 career-long won-lost tally sheet entering the current season, the ageless right-hander stands in a class by himself in Cuba – and also in the rarest of company even when big leaguers are brought into the mix. Yanes is now within easy striking distance of the mark set by obscure major leaguer Jack Powell (245-254), who stands at the top of a short list of North American pros who have logged 200 victories and yet dropped even more games than they gained. Number one on the top ten career chart in a half-dozen different categories, Yanes is second only to Lazo in the total wins column, even though he is the only Cuban hurler to lose more than 200 times. Just imagine what numbers the junk-ball throwing Yanes might have posted over the years had he taken the hill for Santiago (like Norge Vera) or Pinar del Río (like Pedro Lazo) rather than for Isla de la Juventud’s frequent lackluster basement dweller.

Braudilio Vinent Racks Up 63 Career Shutouts in 20 League Seasons. Baseball is a sport in which high water marks are pretty much standard across all corners of the ball-playing universe. It is thus not surprising that Vinent’s lifetime shutouts standard exactly matches the modern-era record total of National League southpaw Warren Spahn. Yet closer examination of the numbers reveals a major gap between the two unequalled performances. Spahn required 665 starts across his 21 Boston and Milwaukee campaigns to reach the mark (thus one shutout every 10.5 starts); Vinent did it during his 20 years of combined National Series and Selective Series seasons in a mere 400 starts (meaning one shutout every 6.3 starts). They both recorded single season highs of 7 (Vinent in the 1973 National Series, Spahn in both 1947 and 1951), but again Santiago’s Vinent stands out here since Cuban seasons are briefer and thus start opportunities are far fewer.

Emilio Salgado Works 230-Plus Innings in a Single Season. How much of a true “iron horse” was Vegueros hurler Emilio Salgado in 1969? Let’s just do the math: since the Cuban National Series of that particular campaign was 99 games in length, it was roughly equivalent to 60% of a normal big league season during the same era. Thus had Salgado worked in the same fashion throughout a 162-game calendar his projected total would have been somewhere in the vicinity of 325 innings tossed. Mickey Lolich labored a live-ball-era-record 361 frames for the Detroit Tigers in 1971, though that number has not been approached in the past couple of decades. So again it appears that the Cuban standard and big league standard are large on par with each other. What is remarkable about Salgado’s effort – when judged by island standards alone – is that no one has surmounted the 200 plateau in four following decades (José Ibar came the closest with 196.1 during his 20-win season of 1998). One interesting footnote to Salgado’s true workhorse season is that the Pinar native also garnered a share of the league record for complete games with 20, a number ironically matched by Roberto Valdés of Minertos that very same campaign.

We have focused here strictly on individual ballplayer records, but there have also been some truly monumental moments of achievement and disaster experienced by entire league teams down through the decades. Holguín once lost 34 games in a row during a 2006 National Series campaign that saw them fall 63 times overall yet somehow still finish six contests better than the circuit’s most hapless outfit representing Metropolitanos. Las Tunas (only two years back, in 2009) managed to score 18 runs during a single inning of a contest versus Guantánamo. The 1972 Mineros club (representing Santiago) captured 27 straight victories yet nonetheless lost the National Series pennant at year’s end in a tie-breaking five-game playoff with Azucareros. Pinar del Río (with a woeful 12-85 ledger) once trailed the league pace-setter (Habana, with a 74-25 mark) by a record 61 full games during the extended 1968 National Series pennant chase. Havana’s wildly popular Industriales Blue Lions are still the only Cuban club to amass four consecutive league titles, something they accomplished back at the dawn of post-revolution baseball history (1963-1966). And Villa Clara’s Orangemen once posted a season’s winning percentage of better than .800 (.837), coasting home with 41 triumphs in only 49 outings during an exceptionally short 1983 campaign (National Series #22). But although baseball is first and foremost a team game, it remains the individual ball player achievements and personal player records that always most stimulate any fan’s attention. We adore our favorite teams yet we truly idolize our individual batting and pitching heroes. Collective achievements never quite pack the same drama as ballyhooed solo performances. This is just as true in Cuba or anywhere else on the international diamond scene as it is for fans of the North American major leagues.

Which in the end has been the most remarkable performance of them all? Perhaps it only makes sense here to separate offensive and defensive achievements when arriving at a hypothetical “best-of-the-best” selection. Opinions will differ widely, of course, and yet some achievements have been so truly exceptional – even when laid alongside similar professional North American counterparts – as to demand almost universal accolades. Considering long-term “cumulative” performances as perhaps most meritorious, I would have to vote for the half-decade .400-plus batting skein of Osmani Urrutia or the unique full-season 20-win mark posted by José Ibar. And or remarkable one-time occurrences, nothing can match Bell’s unparalleled pair of opening-day grand slams, or Abreu’s contiguous pair on no-hit masterpieces. Alexei Bell’s achievement in particular is something we will likely never see again in this or any other baseball lifetime.

Sources and References

Bjarkman, Peter C. A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland Publishers, 2007.

_________. “Vladimir Baños Provides First No-Hitter of Cuba’s Golden Anniversary Season.” Internet article published at www.BaseballdeCuba.com (December 28, 2010).

_________. “Bell Rings in Cuban Season with Spectacular Home Run Display.” Internet article published at www.BaseballdeCuba.com (November 5, 2009).

_________. “The Remarkable Saga of Cuba’s Rubber-Armed Carlos Yanes.” Internet article published at www.BaseballdeCuba.com (April 23, 2009).

de Malas, Daniel. “Los records irrompibles del béisbol Cubano.” Internet article published at www.radio,COCO.irt.cu.cu (November 29, 2010).

Guía Oficial de Béisbol Cubano (various editions, 1998-2010). Editorial Deportes INDER, Havana, Cuba.







Peter C. Bjarkman is the author of A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006 (McFarland, 2007) and is widely recognized as a leading authority on Cuban baseball, both past and present. He has reported on Cuban League action and the Cuban national team for www.BaseballdeCuba.com during the past three-plus years and is currently completing a book on the history of the post-revolution Cuban national team.