Cuba’s Nevin Strategy Works to Perfection

This time, the opposing coach was named Fuentes, not Lopez.

This time, there would be no intentional walk for Phil Nevin with runners on second and third, two outs, in a one-run game, with an amateur baseball championship at stake.

Pepperdine University had one strategy for Nevin, the Cuban Olympic team had another. We will let Nevin swing away, Cuba Coach Jorge Fuentes decided, but we will let him swing away against Omar Ajete, who is the Cuban version of Rob Dibble, except Ajete seems to be an entirely decent, stable individual whom you wouldn’t mind inviting into your own home without checking references.

For the speed gun readout aficionado, Ajete throws heat, 96 m.p.h. on a good night, 94 on a lesser one.

“I haven’t seen anybody that good, certainly not anybody like that on the college level,” U.S. Coach Ron Fraser said. “If I had, I’d have had it investigated.”

This was the at-bat Nevin wanted in Omaha, the at-bat Andy Lopez wouldn’t allow.

“The adrenaline was definitely flowing,” Nevin said. “For both of us. It was strength against strength. I knew what he was going to throw--fastballs on every pitch. And I was going to take my hacks.”

With the count 2-1, Nevin took what could have been the hack of the Olympics. Swinging from Barcelona, he was swinging for Badalona. Make contact here, maybe make some history.

Ajete pumped the ball into the glove of catcher Alberto Hernandez. Strike two.

Nevin untangled himself in the batter’s box, regained his footing and cocked his bat once more.

Ajete fired again, faster than before.

Nevin swung again, same result as before.

End of inning, end of threat, end of the line for this attempted Miracle On Grass At Estadi De Beisbol De L’Hospitalet.

Cuba takes very few 2-1 leads into the bottom of the sixth inning and this one was seconds away from exploding. Victor Mesa’s two-run home run in the sixth made it 4-1 and his two-run single in the eighth made it 6-1.

“I thought we played exceptionally well,” Fraser said in the aftermath. “Cuba played just about a perfect ballgame. And any time Cuba plays a perfect game, you usually lose 16-1 or 20-1.”

The United States lost this one, 6-1, and with it, any chance for a gold medal. The bronze is the heaviest metal the Americans can bid for now; they face Japan in the third-place game today.

Nevin took consolation wherever he could spot it.

“At least I didn’t look at strike three,” he noted.

“I was up there hacking. That’s all you can do.”

Ajete, 27, is of major league age and major league ability, but striking out the newest millionaire of the Houston Astros is as close as he’s likely to get to the real thing. Cuba is 71-1 in its last 72 games of major international baseball competition--the Olympics, the Goodwill Games, the Pan Am Games, the World Championships--because the National and American leagues are not options. When you play baseball in Cuba, you play baseball in Cuba. Castro lets you out only on special occasions, and only until the torch goes out.

So Cuban baseball players have no choice but to play together and play together. “Most of them have been together eight to 10 years,” Fraser says. This is a baseball dynasty the way the New York Yankees used to have dynasties--except when the World Series was over, Mickey Mantle didn’t have to go home and build brick houses.

Nevin has had a tough Olympics--he was hitting .208 before Tuesday’s 2 for 4--but after singling in the ninth inning, the thought of losing an Olympic semifinal, in the grand scheme, didn’t seem so catastrophic.

“Their first baseman (Lourdes Gurriel) patted me on the back and said something to me in Spanish,” Nevin said. “The umpire translated for me. And what Gurriel said was, ‘Good luck with the Astros. Hopefully, I will get to see you play someday.’ ”

Two outs later, Nevin and Gurriel were to go their separate ways, quite possibly forever.

“It was pretty much, ‘Goodby, have a nice life,’ ” Nevin said. “We’ve played a lot of games with the Cubans during the past three years and have become pretty friendly. But this is probably the last time I’ll ever see them, unless they come touring with a traveling team. I don’t think I’ll be going to Cuba for vacation any time soon.”

Nevin has the major leagues in front of him. Seven-figure annual salaries. Endorsements for sportswear and sunglasses. Baseball card royalties.

Ajete has his mortar and his trowel. His Olympic biography lists his profession as “Builder.” Any major league team would welcome him in its bullpen. Omar Linares, who is hitting a ridiculous .543 in Barcelona, might be the best third baseman presently playing on any continent. Linares is 24 years old. His profession? “Student.”

“They are like the Dream Team,” Fraser said. Nevin said when the Americans players got together before the game and discussed the Cubans, “the 1980 U.S. hockey team came up a lot.”

It would have taken that kind of cataclysm to have defeated them.

It will likely take more than that to get them into Comiskey and Fenway parks.

“Maybe, someday, they’ll get the chance,” Nevin said, as wishfully as wistfully. “Hopefully, I’ll see those guys again.”

With one exception, perhaps.

“Thank God,” Nevin said, “I won’t have to face Ajete again.”