Sat, Mar 11, 2006 page20

• Cubans maintain old-school team

  • By George Vecsey / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  The Cubans are like the old Yankees, the old Celtics, the old Packers, the old Islanders. They do not believe in losing, and they have a strong way of reminding one another of this attitude.

  You could hear them in the front rows of a nearly empty stadium the other day when they were in danger of losing, said Jack Cabrera, who left Cuba when he was three. The Cubans goaded one another in pungent slang that Cabrera did not necessarily want his precocious 12-year-old son, Yadiel, to hear, but on the other hand, it was an object lesson of national pride for the boy.

  "They were saying, `Come on, man, what's going on here?'" -- or stronger words to that effect, Cabrera said. And then they backed it up with a rally, a great escape, which has been their trademark over the decades.

  Father and son were watching the Cubans again Thursday night, as they trounced the Netherlands, 11-2, in the World Baseball Classic. One critic of the Castro regime was holding an Abajo Fidel (Down With Fidel) sign directly behind home plate, but the Cabreras watched with the mixed emotions of fans who have more than one homeland in their hearts.

  In fact, the Cabreras have three homelands. The father still roots for Cuba -- "for my father," he said, in perfect New York English. Friday night, if they can find tickets at something less than the scalper's rate of US$250 each, they will cheer for Puerto Rico, because it is home.

  And then there is Port Chester, New York, where Cabrera became an Islanders fan in the early 1980s. He was standing outside Hiram Bithorn Stadium Thursday night, a bilingual, tricultural businessman, reciting the names of another team that refused to be defeated.

  "Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, Billy Smith, Bobby Nystrom," he said, mentioning names not often heard in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

  The Cubans have been kings of international baseball over the years, because the best professionals were occupied in leagues in North America and Japan and elsewhere, not participating in the Olympics or the World Cup of baseball. In this highly experimental tournament, the Cubans have the farthest to fall because they are accustomed to winning.

  They are state-supported amateurs, representing the communist nation of Cuba. Losing to major leaguers would still be losing.

  The players were growling at Yuniesky Maya on the mound Wednesday, after Maya had allowed Panama to tie the score in the bottom of the ninth. He was a pitch away from losing the game and putting the Cubans in danger of missing the next round.

  Then Yulieski Gourriel, the phenom, rescued Cuba with a Derek-Jeter-like, Billy-Martin-like dash into center field to snare a pop fly, and the Cubans dashed off the field, with Maya hiding his face behind his glove.

  "He was crying," Yadiel Cabrera said. He seemed shocked that a whip-armed 24-year-old Cuban pitcher could cry. But father and son also saw the Cuban players surround Maya and embrace him and reassure him that now they would win, which they did, two innings later.
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