I’ve watched Cuba a number of times on TV, but this was my first time seeing them live and in person. I don’t normally savor baseball games at this point. I always enjoy watching it, but I also  sometimes watch 12 games in three days. But  watching the Cuban team play was something special and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Of course it was just an exhibition, the first of two games prior to both teams heading to Beijing.  Neither team was going full tilt the entire game. Cuba’s starter Norge Luis Vera went five innings, for the most part looking as if he’d pulled over to the side of the road during a Sunday drive to play catch with his son. He’d throw a couple fastballs at around 90, toss in a slider or curve, but the speeds were all over the place. Then, and only twice in the game, he threw blazing 96 MPH fastballs. In other words he was holding back and only really bringing it when he had to. Despite this the Korean batters didn’t get much going in the 6-2 loss.

Korea’s pitching held it’s own with SK’s Kim Gwang-hyun and Hanwha’s Ryu Hyun-jin combining for  4 2/3  shutout innings in relief of Woori’s Jang Won-sam. One would assume both Ryu and Kim will be counted on as frontline starters in Beijing, so their success is a positive sign. However,  Kim Kyung-moon is already showing a penchant for the unpredictable, so maybe they won’t start at all. Following Monday’s game vs. The Netherlands he announced reliever Lim Tae-hoon, who I’d been gushing about in my recap of the game was off the team due to “conditioning.”  He will be replaced by Kia veteran Yoon Seok-min.

Without a doubt the play of the game was right off the bat in the first inning when centerfielder Giorvis Duvergel threw out Lee Jeong-wook (who you might remember yesterday was clocked running from second to third at about 3.4 seconds) on a line. Jeong-wook was trying to score from second on a softly hit single and the play wasn’t even all that close. It shocked both the crowd and your scribe, but  I doubt anyone was more surprised than Jeong-wook himself who has surely never encountered an arm like that in the KBO. Ditto for Lee Dae-ho, who was thrown out by a mile by Bell in right on a run scoring single. Dae-ho is as slow as they come, but check out the look of surprise on his face below. The basecoach didn’t even signal for Dae-ho to slide. He may not have had time. The throw was that good.

Pedro Lazzo finished off the final three innings for Cuba and picked up the win. Like Vera he seemed to be going at half speed. This is a very old and veteran Cuban team. The conventional thinking is that Cuba brought its older (and married) players to decrease the chances of defection. That may be, but that would also seem to suggest that nearly all of these players will never have another chance to play in another Olympics (assuming baseball is back on the program after London 2012). If this team is feeling that kind of urgency Cuba might cruise to the gold.