For Dodger Scout Brito, Cuba Is Truly a Baseball Paradise

At the baseball park--Che Stadium, I call it--the Cuban team takes the field. I want to see if these guys are as good as they say. I want to see Omar (El Nino) Linares--”The Kid”--who broke into the Cuban majors at age 14 and then broke record after record. I want to see Victor (El Loco) Mesa--no translation necessary--the base-stealer who supposedly is such a hot dog, he belongs in Chile.

I am not alone. Mike Brito, the Dodger scout usually seen sitting behind home plate with his Panama hat and radar gun, is here at Estadio Latino America for Sunday’s game, sitting behind home plate with his Panama hat and radar gun. So is Frank Wren, a scout from the Montreal Expos. They want to catch these Cubans, too--just in case.

Says Brito, who once lived three miles from this field and played on it, when asked if a few of these Cubans could make the American major leagues had they the chance: “Oh, more than just a few of them. More than a few.”

Seven home runs later, Cuba has defeated Nicaragua, 14-6, in the baseball opener of the Pan American Games. In a stadium that seats 50,000 fans, where cookies and sandwiches are sold in the aisles and chess sets and scuba flippers at the souvenir shops, a below-capacity but noisy crowd sits through a steady drizzle long enough for the Cubans to hammer homers in the eighth inning, back-to-back-to-back.

“Se va!” they cry after every clank of the aluminum bat.

Boris Valdes Lopez, a young Cuban baseball official, leans over cheerfully after the eighth home run and says in English: “It is not really happening, this. It is a replay.”

I ask: “What is ‘Se va?’ ”

“They are saying, ‘It is gone!’ ” Lopez says. He knocks the wooden seat with his knuckle to make a noise. “‘It is gone!”’

Before the game, what I know about Cuban baseball is this:

The island gave the game many great players--some who left here, some who never did. Tony Oliva, Tony Perez and others became heroes in more than one of the Americas where baseball is the national pastime. Cookie Rojas was as versatile a player as there was. Camilo Pascual and Mike Cuellar could pitch with style. Jose Canseco was whisked away when he was a baby; otherwise he, like Omar Linares, might be more famous here than there.

There was a player, Martin Dihigo, who to some was better than any. He is in three baseball Hall of Fames--a Cuban one, a Mexican one and the Negro League’s wing of Cooperstown’s in New York. In one Negro League all-star game, Dihigo played all nine positions, pitching the last three innings. In a doubleheader once, Dihigo pitched the first game then caught the second. Buck Leonard called him the greatest pitcher he ever saw.

His son, Gilberto Dihigo, is a Havana journalist writing a daily column here during the Pan American Games. Gilberto never saw his father play, but in an old-timers game once, after Martin got a hit, his son pinch-ran for him.

There were great teams and great games here, and more than one American player spent some time here, including Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, who is still dining out on the story of his 1955 run-in with Chicatiene Cabrerra, a batter whom he struck deliberately with a pitch. Lasorda kept trying to hit Cabrerra until he succeeded, whereupon a fed-up Chicatiene decided the time had come to strike Senor Lasorda with a bat. It nearly touched off an international incident and was illustrated on the flip side of the only Lasorda bubble-gum trading card ever printed.

Baseball remains Cuba’s game, but the players are stranded--some by choice, some not--unto these friendly confines. The recent defection of Rene Arocha, one of the starting pitchers of the Cuban national team, caused some major consternation for the government, and some minor inconvenience for his manager.

Says Mesa, Arocha’s teammate: “He surprised us by what he did, but he decided to go, so we’ll manage without him. You can even say I said hello to him.”

One complication for Manager Jorge Fuentes was that his No. 1 pitcher, Lazaro Valle, had been lost to him due to a blood clot in his right arm. Fuentes shrugs his shoulders and says: “The players have accepted that loss now. And even though I consider Valle the best amateur pitcher in the world, this doesn’t affect our team. We have enough balance to compensate.”

Possibly so. A surplus of talent is among the reasons Cuba has won the baseball gold medal in the last five Pan American Games, not having lost since the United States took the 1967 championship in Winnipeg. The talent is so boundless that the Dodger scout, Brito, says the real prospects in Cuba are not the guys before your eyes but the numerous boys 15 and 16 years old with great raw skills who are waiting for the older players, such as 34-year-old first baseman Lourdes Gurriel, to hang up their spikes.

Even so, there is simply no denying the ability of Omar Linares, who last year batted .425 in 495 at-bats, with 35 homers and 30 stolen bases.

Now 23, he has hit .400 or higher in five seasons, stands at .366 lifetime and has been called the best-fielding third baseman in Cuba’s history.

As Brito watches Linares coil up in his Eric Davis-like batting stance and rip into a single, he says: “He’s got everything. He can run. He can field. He can hit with power. Everything about him is above-average. I think he would need one year in triple A to get adjusted to facing major league-speed fastballs night after night. But I am here to tell you one thing: This guy can play.”

Linares is not here to tell you a whole lot. But when you ask him if he thinks he could play in the American majors, he looks at you quizzically and asks:

“Por que no?”

Indeed. Why not?

The ballpark was built in 1946, and the outfield addition was completed 25 years later. There is no upper deck; the bleacher seats extend far beyond the left-field and right-field foul poles, curling into the corners. There are symmetrical dimensions: 325 feet to each corner, 345 in left and right, 380 in the gaps and 400 to straightaway center--distances that do not intimidate Cuban hitters.

A submarine pitcher, Roberto Reyes, is on the mound for Nicaragua. He and his teammates wear gray double-knit uniforms that are duplicates of those of the Dodgers, an intentional tribute to Peter O’Malley, who had been very generous in providing Nicaraguan players with equipment and coaches with invitations to Dodger training camp in Vero Beach, Fla.

A Nicaraguan sports minister says to thank Mr. O’Malley but also to tell him that his people “have not yet stopped celebrating” their countryman Dennis Martinez’s perfect game against the Dodgers.

Nicaragua is hanging in there in a 3-2 game and Linares is a little off his form, failing to run from second base after forgetting there were two outs. But then comes the onslaught: Two home runs apiece by Orestes Kindelan and Romelio Martinez, one each by Jose Delgado, Antonio Pacheco and Gurriel. The great Linares, seeing few good pitches, singles and walks twice.

Things are bad enough for Reyes’ replacement, Luis Espino, when he serves up three homers in the eighth, two on consecutive pitches. But Mesa, the notorious “El Loco,” rubs it in by stealing home with two out and Linares at bat. Mesa is notorious as the Rickey Henderson of the tropics, not only Cuba’s all-time base thief but a showboat and braggart who says of Cuban players: “All of us can play in the major leagues!”

Linares is the one, though. The special one. Even his outs are loud. His swing is a thing of beauty.

But there is no getting him away from here, or so at least it seems. Cuba is El Nino’s home. He was a kid when he made the majors and now he is a young adult so popular that in his native province of Pinar del Rio, he also is a representative in the legislature.

“I think I could play (in the United States) all right, but I am not going to play there,” Linares says. “The Revolution formed me. This is my home.”

I see Mike Brito after the game, after the seven homers, after seeing the great El Nino swing. I say: “Sign these guys up, quick.”

Brito says he would love to.

“But wait until you see those 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds,” Brito says. “They’re even better. Remember where you heard it.”