On the MoneyCuba delivered the big hits when it counted, defeating the U.S. to stay unbeatenby Michael Bamberger
The U.S. baseball team has four days to learn how to hit with runners in scoring position. Four days. That's it.
Yesterday, in a game that served as a preview of Friday's likely gold medal matchup, Cuba defeated the U.S. 10-8 before a full house at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Cuba won, according to Cubans, their 140th consecutive super-duper, this-one-really-counts-because-we're-all-here international-tournament baseball game. As for the Olympic tournament, now only Cuba is undefeated (6-0), while the U.S. fell to 5-1. The top four teams advance to the medal round.
Linares hit two of the four Cuban homers that contributed seven runs in a 10-8 victory.
photograph by
After six innings it appeared that the 10-run-lead rule might be trotted out. The Cubans, on the strength of a four-run first inning and a six-run sixth, led 10-2. The U.S. then gradually cut into the deficit until it got the winning run to the plate in the ninth with one out and two on. But Chad Allen and Troy Glaus struck out swinging. With Glaus's final swing, a major street party, no doubt, broke out in Havana.
But getting back into the game should never have been the issue for the U.S. Its lineup is loaded with power top to bottom, but the pitching staff has to do better than put the team in an eight-run hole. The U.S. had five homers, and all of them came with nobody on base. Thirteen hits in all for the Americans, and nobody on when the homers came. Allen and Glaus left two runners stranded, and so did Matt LeCroy when he struck out in the seventh with two men on. Watch the U.S. batters and you seldom see a player who looks desperate to reach first base by any means necessary.
The exception is Jason Williams, the U.S. shortstop and leadoff batter. He's a plate-crowder and was hit twice yesterday, once on the first pitch of the game, by Omar Luis, the other time with a two-strike count. "I'll take one in the head 0 and 2 any day," he said.
The American starter was righthander Billy Koch, a former Clemson pitcher who was selected fourth overall in the major league draft in June by the Toronto Blue Jays. Should Cuba and the U.S. meet again in the gold medal game, he is an unlikely starter. His Clemson teammate Kris Benson, selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates as the first overall pick in the draft, is a much more likely one.
Cuban support was flying high.
photograph by
Koch gave up two homers before the Americans' first at bat. When the side was retired, he threw his glove into the dugout. After the game he had no illusions about what he had done. "They have good hitters, so you can't make mistakes, which I did in the first inning," he said.
Since the end of the cold war, the "evil empire" element to athletic contests between Communist and democratic nations has mostly died, but that spirit was still evident yesterday. When Lazaro Vargas, the Cuban first baseman, lost his bat on an aborted swing, the bat came to rest practically on the pitcher's mound. When Koch failed to retrieve it for him, Vargas strolled toward the mound, got to his bat and kicked it, a little show that said, I don't like you much.
Then he doubled. Later he scored. Five more Cubans scored in the sixth inning. Midway through the onslaught, Koch was replaced by Jim Parque. The Cubans didn't like him much either.
U.S. coach Skip Bertman knows all about the Cuban baseball culture. Before becoming the Louisiana State coach 13 years ago, Bertman coached high school and college baseball in Miami, and there are neighborhoods in that city where Cuban baseball is followed more closely than the Florida Marlins will ever be.
Behind the third base dugout, there was a curious blend of fans waving Cuban flags—pro-Castro baseball fans and anti-Castro baseball fans. "The only reason this game is even close is because the U.S. bought Cuba's top pitchers," said Bob Braxton of Atlanta, an American-born Castro sympathizer and a self-described socialist, who was holding a Cuban flag. "I've been to Cuba three times. It's not a dictatorship. It's a little island with 11 million people, and it's got a baseball team that can play with anyone."
With the defense of first baseman Vargas, the winners withstood five homers by the U.S.
photograph by
Seated to Braxton's right was a Cuban-born American, Edith Monteagudo of the Bronx, who left her homeland in 1968 as a 16-year-old. "These teams are not comparable," said Monteagudo, who was gripping a miniature Stars and Stripes. "We're a bunch of college kids playing old men who are professionals. The only problem with Cuba is Castro. No Castro, no problem."
The fans sat next to each other without ever exchanging harsh words, just lifting their respective flags at different moments in the game.
It was a game in which Cuba showed some moves the U.S. will be more prepared for the next time the two meet. The Cubans sent up eight hitters in the first—two homers, two singles. So what happened in the second? The first three batters bunted.
After the game Jorge Fuentes, the Cuban coach, came into a press room with three players. When the players were posed questions, they answered in the fewest words possible or not at all. They showed little emotion. Baseball is their job, and they perform it expertly. When Omar Linares, the Cubans' gifted third baseman, was asked if the day will come when Cuban players will be able to play baseball in the U.S., he said, through a translator and with great diplomacy, "If the relations between the U.S. and Cuba improve, I think that is possible."
It is also possible that the U.S. can defeat Cuba in a single baseball game. Maybe not in a seven-game series, Bertman said, but in a single game, yes. The U.S. showed that yesterday. The team hopes it will have the opportunity to show it again, in a game for a gold medal, on Friday.
|
|
SI Olympic Dailies
|
