Cuba’s 2nd Place Wasn’t So Bad

by Peter C. Bjarkman*

HAVANA TIMES, Oct.17 – It seems to be an all-too-common story these days. Cuba’s proud national team has yet again ended its quest a single painful step short of the coveted top prize in the latest international baseball tournament.

Once annual winners of almost every international competition in sight, vaunted Cuban squads have now come home second-best in back-to-back World Cup events, as well as in last summer’s Beijing Olympics.

Perhaps even more disappointing to island fanatics is the fact that for the second straight IBAF World Cup event the once-perennial champions were forced to cede a gold medal to the arch-rival USA, thus ending long-standing Cuban domination in the event that stretched throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and also most of this first decade of a new millennium.

*To Read Pete Bjarkmans full analysis on the recent World Cup Baseball tournament see: “Recent World Cup Finish Is No Embarrassment for Cuban National Team”