Obama Hurls the Opening Pitch
U.S. President Barack Obama is going to make the opening pitch in the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Team Cuba. Controversial Victor Mesa will be coaching the island’s team. He says that they have the potential to “offer a good game” and “they could even win”
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Obama will have the honor to hurl the opening pitch in the game between the MLB Tampa Bay Rays and Team Cuba, a historic clash that is scheduled to take place at Havana’s Latin American Baseball Stadium on March 22.
That’s what the head coach of Team Cuba, Victor Mesa, told Caribbean News Digital and Excelencias Cuba at the Nelson Fernandez Stadium, where the Cuba Baseball Team is presently training, located some 30 kilometers east of Havana, in San Jose de Las Lajas.
The busy training sessions are also attended by the managers of provincial teams that qualified to the National Series Playoffs: Roger Machado (Ciego de Avila), Javier Mendez (Industriales) and Ricardo Gallardo (Pinar del Rio).
They will be providing assistance to Victor Mesa, who is also backed up by a bevy of seasoned Cuban ballplayers that includes Omar Linares, Orestes Kindelan, Pedro Luis Lazo or Pedro Medina. In the past, Major League Baseball agents tried to get their services, but they turned down profitable offers.
“We have a good and well-balanced team, and I think that we can offer a good game… and we could even win,” Victor Mesa told the press, although he also underlined that he’s proud to have been summoned to manage the team, but he thinks that other valuable players were left out of the squad.
“As a manager, I wasn’t asked when it came to choosing the players for the team,” he underscored.
Omar Linares Will Be Watching the Game
Omar Linares, penciled in as one of the best baseball players of all time, pointed out that the possibility of having Cuban athletes playing at MLB level is certainly going to improve the quality of Cuban baseball.
“There are many young players out there that will have the opportunity to take their skills to the next level,” Linares said, who also said no to lucrative offers issued by several MLB teams.
When asked about the damage caused to Cuban baseball by the defection of ballplayers, he admitted that the quality level is currently lower, but other factors have also brought about this situation, although “we still have great baseball players with quality good enough to play in Major League Baseball and stand up for Cuba.”
Machado Would Have Loved to Manage the Team
The manager of the Ciego de Avila team, one of the top scorers in recent years in Cuba’s National Series, said he would have loved to manage the national team against the Tampa Bay Rays.
“However, I think that the decision to bring in Victor Mesa, who coaches the team that is leading the ongoing National Series, was a positive step. I also applaud the idea of inviting the managers of the other four teams involved in the post-season to assist him.”
So, a controversial Victor Mesa, who recently aired his intention to retire from baseball due to what he described as “threats to his physical integrity”, will be helped by Roger Machado (Ciego de Avila), Javier Mendez (Industriales) and Ricardo Gallardo (Pinar del Rio).
This fact, the reinforcement of a team that combines experienced players with young talents, and even the presence of such symbolic athletes as Linares, Medina, Lazo or Kindelan, speak volumes of Cuba’s decision to put on a good show against the Tampa Bay Rays, the second MLB team to play in Cuba after the Baltimore Orioles visited the island in 1999. That match finished tied at one win apiece.
“I’m not here as a player or a coach, so I don’t have much to say,” a smiling Pedro Luis Lazo expressed, a Pinar del Rio-born pitcher that’s labeled as one of the best Cuban athletes of all time.
“Anyway, I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for these boys of summer,” he pointed out and added that he believes President Obama’s recent measures to ease the hiring of Cuban baseball players in the Big Leagues will be very positive.
“There is a lot of talent, even though we have lost some players,” said this man that rejected several offers that would have made him a millionaire in Major League Baseball, just as it happened to his friend and also pitcher Jose Ariel Contreras, and to Orlando“El Duque” Hernandez, who played for the New York Yankees, the White Sox, Colorado and the Philadelphia Phillies.
Nonetheless, perhaps there is still an opportunity for Lazo to step onto the mounds of some of America’s big ballparks because the hiring of players could also be coupled with contracts for trainers and coaches.
Lazo was already hired by the Mexican League, where he coached junior pitchers. But he was in such good shape and his fastball was so red hot that he wound up pitching for the Campeche Pirates.
Now as we still see him pitching at the ballpark where he’s now training Team Cuba, maybe a scout could feel his coaching potential and make his dream of playing in Major League Baseball come true.
