Pete Bjarkman (seen here in Pinar del Río in February 2001) has traveled the Cuban baseball scene for a dozen years and now provides the most intimate and detailed look at the island's most notable ballplayers (over 300 in total) of the half-century revolutionary era.
This volume represents a first and only biographical encyclopedia (in English or Spanish) devoted to Cuban ballplayers who have performed in the post-revolution Cuban “amateur” league (1962-2007) and on Cuban national teams which have dominated international tournaments for the past 45 years (including Olympic Baseball, World Cup tournaments, Intercontinental Cup and Pan American Games competitions). All the major stars and important lesser figures of the Cuban National Series and Selective Series (recently renamed the Super League) are included, as well as every member of all senior-level Cuban national teams of the past five decades. Player profiles are accompanied by career statistics (for all players) and numerous photos (for about one-third of the entries). Important non-playing figures like managers, coaches, league officials (including Fidel Castro) and broadcasters are also provided. Supplemental materials include 2 chapters outlining post-1962 Cuban baseball history, thus giving a context for the player portraits.
Major League Baseball’s March 2006 World Baseball Classic shocked an international audience when previously unheralded “amateurs” from the long-hidden Cuban League unleashed a talent display that lead to an appearance in the tournament finals. Pedro Luis Lazo (once a teammate of 2005 World Series star José Contreras, himself an ex-Cuban Leaguer) demonstrated dominance equal to any big league closer, American audiences discovered a slugger named Osmani Urrutia who has now batted over .400 in five of the past six seasons, and Baseball America at tournament’s end dubbed second baseman Yulieski Gourriel the top non-signed prospect of the entire WBC field. Who are these great Cuban stars that almost no one outside the island has heard of? How many others like them have played in the shadows during recent decades after Cuban baseball became off-limits to major league talent scouts? Here for the first time are the intimate portraits and career details of a half-century of Cuban ballplayers who have been as lost to North American fans, sportswriters, and historians as were the now-legendary blackballers of the pre-1947 Negro leagues era.
Even for Spanish-speaking Cuban fans on the island nation no “Who’s Who” volume collecting portraits of all major and minor Cuban Leaguers has ever previously been published. And outside of Cuba, the false notion still persists that most of the great Cuban stars played before the 1961 closing of Cuba’s professional baseball era. This single volume corrects both voids and opens for North American readers one of the very last hidden corners of the baseball universe.
Many Cuban leaguers of the past five decades have been true big leaguers in talent and achievements; yet their careers have been hidden from North American fans by the circumstances of Cold War politics that has keep islanders out of the major leagues and that has also hidden Cuban National Series action from the view of most Americans. The record here of these players’ achievements, milestones and playing talents is an important contribution to modern-era baseball history. Diminutive righty Aquino Abreu (1966) duplicated Johnny Vander Meer’s big league feat of back-to-back no-hitters; Sports Illustrated writer Ron Fimrite once called slugging 1970s-era Havana first baseman Antonio Muñoz a left-handed Tony Pérez; 1980s/1990s-era infielder Omar Linares was widely touted as the best third baseman never to play in the majors; 100-mph fastballer Maels Rodríguez was reputed to have the best arm of the past quarter-century by many big league scouts who saw him in international tournaments before his 2002 career-ending arm injury; 1990s shortstop Germán Mesa was the equal to Ozzie Smith and right-hander Lázaro Valle was always considered in his homeland to be a cut above “El Duque” Hernández; and in recent months viewers of the World Baseball Classic were shocked by the hitting of Yulieski Gourriel, the game-closing skills of Pedro Luis Lazo, and the crack infield play of Eduardo Paret. Here, for the first time for U.S. readers, are full portraits and career details of these amazing all-stars.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Cuba's National Series: A Contextual History
Chapter 2 - The Special Flavor of Cuban Baseball
Chapter 3 - Best Team Money Can't Buy: Cuba's International Domination
Chapter 4 - Revolutionary Baseball's Twenty-Five Greatest Players
Chapter 5 - Cuban League Teams
Chapter 6 - Stars and Role Players of the 1960s and 1970s
Chapter 7 - Stars and Role Players of the 1980s and 1990s
Chapter 8 - Stars and Role Players of the 2000s
Appendix I: Chronology of Cuban Baseball, 1962-2008
Appendix II: National Series and Selective Series Statistical Records
Bibliography
Index
Modern-Era Cuban Baseball Legends
Omar Linares (Pinar del Río, 1982-2002) was arguably the best all-around player and certainly the most visible star of post-revolution Cuban League baseball. A heavy-hitting, strong armed and swift-footed (until late career) third baseman, Linares today trails only Osmani Urrutia on the career batting average list (.368); he is also still the all-time Cuban League leader in runs scored (1547) and slugging average (.644), ranking second in total bases (behind Orestes Kindelán), third in base hits (2195, after Antonio Pacheco and Fernando Sánchez), and third in home runs (404, trailing Orestes Kindelán and Lázaro Junco). A star in international tournaments from the mid-1980s through the end of the century, Linares was regularly referred to in the international press as “the best ballplayer on the planet outside of the professional major leagues). Making his international debut as a teenager in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup matches in Edmonton, Canada, the hefty right-handed slugger pounded the ball at a remarkable .467 clip—a signal of things to come. In 23 total major international tournament appearances Linares batted at a .430 clip with 78 round trippers and 227 RBI in his 749 official at-bats. In domestic competition he captured five National Series batting crowns (1985, 1986, 1990, 1992, 1993), a feat surpassed only by Osmani Urrutia (who to date owns six titles, won in 2001-2005 and 2007). Linares four times batted above the magic .400 level (.409 in 1985, .426 in 1986, .442 in 1990, .446 in 1993) yet never won a league home run title in National Series play (despite topping the 30-homer plateau on five different occasions).
Osmani Urrutia (Las Tunas, 1995-2008) has no peer among Cuban-born hitters of any era: Linares may have been the best all-around performer, Canseco and Palmeiro and Oliva may have swung heavy sticks in the "play-for-dollars" leagues, but no one rivals the contemporary Urrutia as a master lumberman. He may not be artistic, and he may not have much of a reputation outside the island; he is not always as appreciated by the Cuban League brass as might be expected (he was left off the 2008 Olympic team); and his line-drive shots may not thrill fans the way soaring circuit clouts do. But all he does is hit, hit, and hit some more. Owner of an unparalleled .370 career BA over 14-plus seasons (90 game Cuban seasons), Urrutia captured five consecutive hitting titles between 2001 and 2005 with averages of .431, .408, .421, .469 (the National Series record), .385. His average for the five-year span was an unearthly .422, a feat never matched in the U.S. majors or minors (Rogers Hornsby came closest in the 1920s). When the string was broken in 2006 (he was runner-up to Michel Enríquez) Urrutia still hit .425; a year latter he climbed back on top with a .371. And no wooden bats here, as those were dispatched from Cuban League play in 1999. And for the doubters among you, Urrutia also tattooed big league hurlers at a .345 clip in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. This is the closest thing to a pure batting machine ever witnessed in the global baseball universe.
Pedro Luis Lazo (Pinar del Río, 1992-2008) made history in National Series #47 (2007-2008) when he upped his league career victory total to 238 (versus 126 losses), overhauling the long-standing mark of 1980s-1990s era southpaw Jorge Luis Valdés. But his true career highlight moment came on a big league diamond in March 2006 when he closed out the Cuban victory over the Dominican Republic (with Alberto Pujols and Alfonso Soriano in the lineup) in the World Baseball Classic semifinals. The memorable game that launched the Cubans into the title match with Japan is now widely acknowledged as the biggest single victory in the annals of Cuban baseball history. The ace starter for powerhouse Pinar del Río teams since the mid-nineties, the gigantic Lee Smith look-alike has been the ace closer for the Cuban national teams since the departure of Pinar teammate José Contreras in 2003. Owning a 95 mph “big league” fastball (he has been clocked on occasion as high as 98) and a deadly 87-mph slider that Alberto Pujols (after facing him in the San Diego WBC match) called the toughest he had ever seen, Lazo is both intimidating and durable, posting a 10-4 mark during the 2008 National Series season despite having turned 35 years of age. At the outset of the 2008-2009 campaign Lazo announced that National Series #48 would be his swan song season; he enters his final year with 2965 innings pitched (fourth highest in league history), 376 starts, 2138 strikeouts (third all-time behind Rogelio García and Faustino Corrales, also both Pinar hurlers), and a .654 winning percentage that ranks in the career top ten.
Frederich Cepeda (Sancti Spíritus, 1999-2002) is a reasonable choice as the best all-around performer on the contemporary Cuban scene. A muscular .323 career batter over his ten National Series seasons, the switch-hitting outfielder provides the perfect combination of awesome power from both sides with remarkable strike zone discipline and an uncanny batting eye: Cepeda is regularly at the top of the league standings in both on-base percentage and walks received. But his true value has been as a clutch hitter for the national team in big-pressure international contests. His legacy includes all the following: homers in his final two at-bats for the deciding runs of the 2003 World Cup gold medal game in Havana; scoring the winning run in the 2005 World Cup title match at Rotterdam; smashing a crucial two-out ninth inning homer to salvage the crucial opening 2007 World Cup match with Australia in Taiwan; a solo shot for the only tally of a crucial 2008 Olympic duel versus Taipei.
Orestes Kindelán (Santiago de Cuba, 1982-2002) is Cuba’s greatest slugger of the modern post-revolution and perhaps (USA-raised José Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro aside) of any other league or era. The muscular righty swing (now batting coach for Santiago and for the Cuban national team) stands atop the combined National Series and Selective Series career lists with 487 homers, 1511 RBI and 3893 total bases. He also boasts 1379 runs scored (third behind Linares and Enríque Díaz), 2030 base hits, 1232 walks (fourth all-time), the lifetime-best mark with 91 sacrifice flies, and the only career .600-plus slugging percentage outside of Linares. The only knock on Kindelán’s achievements (including the longest homer ever witnessed in Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium during the 1996 Olympic Games) remains the fact that they all came in the era of aluminum bats. The only significant Cuban League slugging records that he doesn’t currently own are the National Series single-season milestones of 31 homers and 111 RBI stroke last winter by his Santiago protégé Alexei Bell. Despite Kindelán's recent elevation to the national team bench as top hitting instructor, a certain bitter taste remains surrpounding his "forced" 2002 retirement to the Japanese industrial league; at the time he was within easy-enough reach of the 500 career home run plateau if allowed to play just one last National Series season in his homeland.
