SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It was a worry-some start that turned into a resounding domination when the United States piled it on to Cuba’s long-awaited visit to Miami via Sunday’s 14-2 semifinals of the World Baseball Classic.
Next stop for the USA is against the winner of today’s Mexico versus Japan survivor also played at the Loan-Deput Park Stadium in the Havana area in Miami.
Except for the top of the first inning when right-hander Adam Wainright of the St. Lous Cardinals loaded the bases with no out, but got out of it with only one run scoring.
From there, it was a dismal day for the Cuban team that played in Miami for the first time since 1959 when dictator Fidel Castro politically took over his country and it has been under communist rule since.
Boom, boom, boom, it was an unrelenting red, white and blue lineup that kept putting crooked numbers on the scoreboard, a dynamic display of the huge gap between an American team of major leaguers and Cubans struggling on the main stage as their top players have left the island nation.
The onslaught began in the last of the first when Paul Goldschmidt and Trea Turner homered, Goldschmidt with a two-run shot to the upper deck in left field and Turner with a solo to left-center.
While Goldschmidt drove home four runs, Turner hit a second shot into the stands, and Cedric Mullins also went deep in a game interrupted three times by fans running onto the field to display protest signs.
“The team kind of represents the government there, and people aren’t too happy about it,” said U.S. manager Mark DeRosa.
So now his team takes the field again at the same site on Tuesday night in quest of its second-best championship, the other in 2017, of this event now in its sixth outing.
Turner, in the No. 9 batting slot, has a tournament-leading 10 RBI. He followed his grand slam the night before that brought a 9-7 win over Venezuela, with the solo four-bagger, and a 3-run drive in the sixth.
The starter, 41-year-old Wainwright, settled down without allowing a ball out of the infield at the start. After forcing in a run with a 3-2 bases- loaded walk, he recovered to strand the bags and went the next four innings allowing four hits.
He said he put himself in that situation in the first place by making horrible PFP plays or not making PFP plays in reference to pitchers’ fielders practice and two grounders he failed to come up with. Cards’ teammate Miles Mikolas followed with four frames and Aaron Loup finished.
Arizona RHP Merrill Kelly is likely to start the final.
Meanwhile, the American batters pounded away for 14 hits, eight for extra bases. They added seven walks and scored in seven of eight innings.
DeRosa has a rather stacked lineup of major leaguers, with Goldschmidt and Turner joined by Mookie Batts, Pete Alonso, Nolan Arenado, and Jose Altuve, although Arenado and Altuve did leave with injuries.
“Gee,” laughed DeRosa, I wonder who decided to bat Turner ninth.”
It was a sellout crowd of 35,799 at that ballpark, and sounded evenly split between the U.S. and Cuba.
Cuba manager Armando Johnson said, “There were some provocations, but we never paid attention to them.”
An Olympic gold medalist in 1992,1996 and 2004, Cuba’s national team has struggled in recent years as many of its top players left for Major League Baseball, and it failed to qualify for the 2020 Toyko Games.
As for the United States, it just showed up and displayed its National Pastime.
