I have the honor of being one of only two journalists outside of the island of Cuba to cast an official ballot (one of 30 total ballots) in selecting the year-end Cuban League all-stars, plus MVP and ROY selections. The other non-Cuban resident invited to vote in the official Cuban press poll is my colleague Ray Otero at www.baseballdecuba.com. Below is the ballot I cast in this year's post-season elections.

Yadier Pedroso (Habana Provice), National Series #48 ERA champion, is Bjarkman's choice for 2009 Cuban League Most Valuable Player

Cuban League 2009 All-Star Selections

Catcher: Rolando Meriño (Santiago de Cuba)

First Base: Leslie Anderson (Camagüey)

Second Base: Yolian Cercé (Guantánamo)

Third Base: Yulieski Gourriel (Sancti Spíritus)

Shortstop: Aledmis Díaz (Villa Clara)

Outfielder: Frederich Cepeda (Sancti Spíritus)

Outfielder: Alfredo Despaigne (Granma)

Outfielder: Yoennis Céspedes (Granma)

DH: Yenier Bello (Sancti Spíritus)

Utility Man: Yoandy Galobo (Matanzas)

Pitcher (Right Hander): Yunieski Maya (Pinar del Río)

Pitcher (Left Hander): Maikel Folich (Ciego de Avila)

Pitcher (Reliever): Vladimir García (Ciego de Avila)

Cuba League 2009 All-Defensive Team (Golden Gloves)

Catcher: Rolando Meriño (Santiago de Cuba)

First Base: Leslie Anderson (Camagüey)

Second Base: Mario Vega (Ciego de Avila)

Third Base: Yulieski Gourriel (Sancti Spíritus)

Shortstop: Yorbis Borroto (Ciego de Avila)

Outfielder: Ruby Silva (Habana Province)

Outfielder: Jorge Padrón (Pinar del Río)

Outfielder: Leonys Martin (Villa Clara)

Pitcher: Ismel Jiménez (Sancti Spíritus)

Rookie of the Year (Top Three Selections)

First Place (3 points): Dennis Laza (OF) (Habana Province)

Second Place (2 points): Ramon Lunar (OF) (Villa Clara)

Third Place (1 point): Aledmis Díaz (SS) (Villa Clara)

Most Valuable Player (Top Three Selections)

First Place (3 points): Yadier Pedroso (P) (Habana Province)

Second Place (2 points): Yorelvis Charles (IF) (Ciego de Avila)

Third Place (1 point): Yulieski Gourriel (IF) (Sancti Spíritus)

Post-Season MVP and ROY (2009 Playoffs)

Most Valuable Player: Miguel Alfredo González (P) (Habana Province)

Top Rookie: Ramon Lunar(OF) (Villa Clara)

Manager of the Year

Esteban Lombillo (Habana Province)

Cuba's 48th National Series has now culminated with a maiden championship for the Habana Province Cowboys, only the second time (the others being 1983 and 2002) in a quarter-century when a first-time-ever champion has been crowned. Habana rode the league's best pitching (Miguel Alfredo González, Yadier Pedroso, Yulieski González, Jonder Martínez and Miguel Lahera) to a five-game triumph over upstart Villa Clara in the championship finals. The month-long post-season festival included numerous surprises and a healthy dose of rather bizarre twists and turns of the kind that make the Cuban League baseball's most exciting and entertaining venue. But the most surprsing element of all perhaps was the fact that none of the headline stars of 2009's post-season action were players who had participated on Cuba's talented World Baseball Classic roster last March. A strong signal has again been sent that Cuban baseball is constantly renewing its seemingly inexhaustible talent supply.

For a complete summary of this year's Cuban League post-season action, see my full on-the-scene report at http://www.baseballdecuba.com/newsContainer.asp?id=1657.

The baseball playoff season is also a time for individual post-season honors, and Cuba is certainly no exception. It is, however, a little more difficult to find comprehensive lists of past-season winners, and that is due largely to a strange gap in the Cuban League record books. The annual guides (perhaps due to severe space restrictions and printing costs) do not carry any season MVP or Rookie-of-the-Year lists for bygone campaigns, although both these distinctions are annually announced in the Cuban sporting press. Cuba has no other major individual awards--such as a Cy Young Award for pitchers--and there is no "official" designation of a playoff MVP. The top post-season performer has, however, been "unofficially" recognized for the past dozen seasons by Havana's Radio COCO, one of the top Cuban media outlets for coverage of the national game.

Since I have received numerous requests over the past several years for a list of Cuban MVPs (or for winners of the honor in this season or that season) it would seem most appropriate to publish such a list. I did not provide one in A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2007 (published in 2007). So I will now offer an up-to-date listing (it will appear later this week on the Playoffs Page of www.baseballdecuba.com), along with a handful of related editorial comments touching on trivial curiosities pertaining to past selections, plus the prospects for the certain-to-be-controversial current season MVP selection.

In reviewing lists of past winners, a number of historical oddities are worth noting. Only a small handful of ballplayers have tacked together multiple MVP seasons, and fewer still have captured the top rookie designation and then later taken MVP honors. The only three-time winner of the MVP laurels is Omar Linares, but with Yulieski Gourriel only now reaching his peak years this may soon change. Gourriel might well have been in the running for this year's coveted honor (it would have been his third) had he not dropped the batting title to Michel Enríquez during his final season's at-bat, or had his Sancti Spíritus club performed better (drawing more attention to his own torrid slugging) during early weeks of the past National Series campaign.

In nearly a half century there have been but six players who have repeated as National Series league MVP, with Omar Linares the only three-time honoree. Yulieski Gourriel and earlier Wilfredo Sánchez are the only pair to wear the MVP crown in consecutive years, while the trio of Lourdes Gourriel (Yulieski's father), Cheito Rodríguez, and Michel Abreu (later in North American professional baseball) were Rookie-of-the-Year selections who later also earned the MVP distinction. Outfielders make up the largest proportion of MVPs, with Havana's Industriales not surprisingly having produced more winners of the honor than any other single ball club. Players from Pinar del Río (including that club's several appearances under the name Vegueros) can claim seven MVPs and thus Pinar stands a close second in the team category.

The current year's honoree will not be announced until the end of post-season play and this time around will likely represent a most difficult MVP decision. Alfredo Despaigne essentially matched Alexei Bell's sensational season of a year ago (when Bell was the consensus selection) and was indisputably the outstanding performer, at least on offense--setting a new league home run mark, becoming the first player to reach 100 homers in his first five National Series seasons, and also pacing the circuit in both RBIs and slugging average. But does that necessarily mean he was the MVP--as opposed to the league's most visible star, which is quite another thing? This is the same debate that occurs often with big league selections. Should a player from a last-place club be considered all that valuable, since his teammates would have finished in the same tail-ender position with or without his output? The question always is whether the candidate's performances had the same impact on his team's achievements as they did on the record book? I am of the school (the majority of MVP voters, I suspect) that still believes this award should say as much about a player's value in the lineup as it does about his hefty personal stats.

My own vote would probably go to either Yunieski Maya (Pinar del Río), Maikel Folich (Ciego de Avila) or Yadier Pedroso (Habana Pedroso). These three outstanding pitchers have done the lion's share of the work in putting their teams into the playoffs, and one of them may yet carry his teammates to a league championship during the playoff round. There is also some prejudice against pitchers, of course, since some would argue that the MVP should go to a ballplayer from the everyday lineup and not one who appears but once or twice a week (that is, a pitcher). In the major leagues, this line of thinking is also supported by the existence of a special pitcher's award; the CY Young Award is designed for the American League and National League MVP pitchers. But in the Cuban League there is no equivalent Cy Young Award; perhaps we should have a José Huelga Trophy for the year's top pitcher, but we do not. Thus in the past Cuban League pitchers have faired comparatively well in MVP voting, claiming ten (a little more than one-fifth) of the previous 47 crowns. Maels Rodríguez was the last hurler to walk off with the honor, during the year (2001) when he smashed a celebrated single-season strikeout mark and thus also bagged most of the winter's top headlines.

My own vote for MVP, then, goes to league ERA champ Yadier Pedroso (pictured above) of Habana Province. But if pushed to predict the actual winner I would guess that it will in the end be either batting champion Enríquez (his team at least made the playoffs, even if they were crushed in the opening round) or home run record setter Despaigne. Just like in the "grand" leagues, in Cuba it is the sluggers and not pitchers "that drive the Cadillacs."  Well not exactly, of course, because almost no one in Cuba drives a Cadillac--or at least not one built during the last five decades. But the point here is that in modern-era baseball it is the run-producing sluggers who garner the bulk of media attention--even in more baseball-pure Cuba.

The complete listing of Cuban League MVP, Rookie-of-the-Year, and Post-Season MVP award winners will be available this week on the Playoff Page of  our website at www.baseballdecuba.com. The list can also be accessed at http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=8591.

Habana Province today became the first club to earn a Cuban League post-season semifinals berth by convincingly grabbing four of five matches from outmanned Isla de la Juventud. The brief series was punctuated with a Monday afternoon 19-5 seven-inning "mercy rule" romp in the loser's Cristóbal Labra Stadium (Nueva Gerona). The Cowboys must now await the victor of a Pinar del Río and Sancti Spíritus quarterfinal showdown that could end as early as tonight (with Pinar currently maintaining a 3-1 lead in that second best-of-seven series). A Pinar trip to the semis would mean a desired paring of first-place (Habana) and second place finishers for the Occidental League crown. In the eastern sector of the country, first place Ciego de Avila currently holds a 2-0 lead over scrappy Holguín, while defeading champion Santiago de Cuba is now trailing upset-minded Villa Clara 2-1 in the second Oriental League quarterfinal.

The biggest story in Habana Province's lopsided knockout win was the rare hitting feat authored by Cowboys second baseman Ernest Molinet, a sold slugger boasting 12 homers, a .330 BA and a .515 slugging average during regular-season action. In the fifth inning of today's romp Molinet blasted two homers, the first a two-run shot and the second a game-capping grand slam. Molinet also doubled home a seventh run earlier in the same contest. While a single player has crushed two homers during a single inning on 51 different occasions in the North American major leagues, this feat has never been accomplished during big league post-season action. It is currently thought (I am still searching the Cuban record books) that such an event has also never happened during any previous Cuban League playoff match. It is also apparently the case that on the 51 occasions of a player stroking two homers in a single frame in the majors, only light-hitting infielder Fernando Tatis of the St. Louis Cardinals (April 23, 1999) can claim a grand slam as part of the endeavor. Tatis actually blasted two grand slams in the same frame in Dodger Stadium, thus collecting eight RBIs (two more than Molinet). For the record, Molinet also clubbed the game-winning round tripper in the eighth frame of the opener of this short-lived Habana Province-Isla series.

When Alexei Bell smashed 31 homers and knocked in 111 runs in National Series #47 he obliterated two long-standing Cuban League slugging records. But one of Bell's new marks didn't hold up for long. Twenty-three year old Granma phenom Alfredo Despaigne has feasted on weak league pitching throughout the current campaign and roared down the stretch run following the World Baseball Classic recess to quickly erase Bell's short-lived home run standard. The new record came in dramatic fashion on one of the most chaotic final days (and final weekends) of Cuban National Series history. On Friday evening (May 1) Cuba's lifetime batting average leader Osmani Urrutia announced his surprise early retirement from the game after but 16 seasons; Urrutia, who will not turn 33 until mid-June, now walks away from the sport with an unmatched .369 lifetime hitting mark. But Urrutia's premature departure was buried by the on-the-field drama of the campaign's final tense hours. On Sunday afternoon (May 3) Michel Enríquez (Isla) and Yulieski Gourriel (Sancti Spíritus) entered the last day of league action in a virtual dead heat for this season's coveted individual batting title. And the biggest piece of drama was provided by Despaigne, who had been sitting on 31 homers all week long since matching Bell's 2008 output eight days earlier.

Batting in the unusual leadoff spot on Sunday (in an effort to increase his possible at-bat opportunities) Despaigne was zero for one (plus one walk) entering the fifth frame when he finally exploded for his landmark homer with two aboard, as part of an 11-run Granma uprising versus four Villa Clara hurlers. Six RBIs in the contest also left the slugger only three short of becoming the second Cuban league to reach 100-plus in a National Series campaign (Bell became the first last season). The historic homer not only established a new single-season standard but also left the rising national team star as the first Cuban slugger to reach the century mark for round trippers during his first five National Series seasons. The closest to achieving that distinction were Yulieski Gourriel with 99 and Despaigne's Granma teammate Yoennis Céspedes, who had recorded 96 by the close of his own fifth campaign during National Series #47 (2007-2008).

Despaigne has also now teamed with Céspedes (who has blasted 24 this winter) to write a new standard for a single-team slugging tandem. Last winter Despaigne (24) and Céspedes (26) became the first pair of teammates to reach the combined figure of fifty round trippers in a National Series campaign. They have now extended last year's achievement by a half-dozen, thus rubber-stamping their ranking as the greatest single one-two home run punch in the nearly half-century annals of Cuba's revolutionary baseball.

Bell, for his part, last winter became the first National Series batsman to reach the 30-homer plateau when he overhauled the previous record of 28 clubbed by Joan Carlos Pedroso in National Series #42 (2002-2003). Orestes Kindelán (Cuba's career leader with 487 before his retirement in 2001) had originally reached the 30-homer plateau during 1986 Selective Series play (the now-discontinued "second season" which at the time was 63 games in length). Bell's breakout 2008 campaign also featured the only 100-plus RBI season, a mark which Despaigne has now missed equaling by the narrowest of margins.

Previous Top Cuban League Home Run Seasons

32 Alfredo Despaigne (Granma), 2009 National Series #48 (90-game season)

31 Alexei Bell (Santiago de Cuba), 2008 National Series #47 (90-game season)

30 Orestes Kindelán (Serranos), 1986 Selective Series #12 (63-game season)

28 Orestes Kindelán (Serranos), 1988 Selective Series #14 (63-game season)

28 Joan Carlos Pedroso (Las Tunas), 2003 National Series #42 (90-game season)

27 Joan Carlos Pedrsos (Las Tunas), 2005 National Series #44 (90-game season)

27 Yulieski Gourriel (Sancti Spíritus), 2006 National Series #45 (90-game season)

27 Lázaro Junco (Matanzas), 1993 National Series #32 (65-game season)

Cuban League home run records (unlike the tainted productions of a recent generation of major leaguers) are assuredly not the product of any chemical assistance, as one can easily gather by looking at photos of the undersized Despaigne and Bell, or the muscular yet slender Gourriel. Nor are they ever accompanied by (or diminished by) a qualifying footnote like the infamous Roger Maris asterisk. Since both the current National Series and now defunct Selective Series (Cuba's "second season" from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s) have regularly varied in length-of-season over recent decades, the number of games played to achieve record production has never been a point of serious discussion. Looking at that factor of games played (such a preoccupation of number-crunching MLB fans), Kindelán's two top seasons in the Selective Series would appear to stand as the more legitimate Cuban League record, challenged most closely by Junco's output in 1993 (NS #32). But there is a mitigating factor here and that is the non-level playing field produced by the usage of aluminum bats. The dividing line between metal "rocket launchers" and legitimate baseball lumber is 1999 (National Series #38) and only Bell, Despaigne, Pedroso and Yulieski Gourriel have posted record or near-record numbers for long balls in the more recent "wooden bat" epoch.

Despaigne's 2008-09 Home Run Log

#32 (May 3, 2009) versus Villa Clara (Augusto César Sandino Stadium, Villa Clara) Game #90

#31 (April 25, 2009) versus Isla de La Juventud (Cauto Cristo Stadium, Granma) Game #83

#30 (April 22, 2009) versus Pinar del Río (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #80

#29 (April 17, 2009) versus Villa Clara (Mátires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #76

#28 (April 17, 2009) versus Villa Clara (Mártres de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #76

#27 (April 15, 2009) versus Ciego de Avila (Mártires de Bardados Stadium, Granma) Game #74

#26 (April 14, 2009) versus Ciego de Avila (Mátires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #73

#25 (April 12, 2009) versus Pinar del Río (Capitan San Luis Stadium, Pinar del Río) Game #72

#24 (April 8, 2009) versus Isla de la Juventud (Cristobal Labra Stadium, Nueva Gerona) Game #68

#23 (April 5, 2009) versus Sancti Spíritus (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #66

#22 (April 3, 2009) versus Sancti Spíritus (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #64

#21 (March 31, 2009) versus Cienfuegos (Wilfredo Páges Stadium, Manzanillo) Game #61

#20 (March 29, 2009) versus Holguín (Calixto García Stadium, Holguín) Game #60

#19 (March 28, 2009) versus Holguín (Báguanos Stadium, Holguín) Game #59

#18 (March 28, 2009) versus Holguín (Báguanos Stadium, Holguín) Game #59

#17 (March 27, 2009) versus Holguín (Calixto García Stadium, Holguín) #58

Six-Week Break for World Baseball Classic

#16 (February 8, 2009) versus Santiago de Cuba (Guillermón Moncada Stadium, SCU) Game #57

#15 (February 8, 2009) versus Santiago de Cuba (Guillermón Moncada Stadium, SCU) Game #57

#14 (February 7, 2009) versus Santiago de Cuba (Guillermón Moncada Stadium) Game #56

#13 (February 5, 2009) versus Guantánamo (Nguyen Van Troi Stadium, Guantánamo) Game #54

#12 (January 30, 2009)) versus Camagüey (Wilfredo Páges Stadium, Manzanillo) Game #49

#11 (January 20, 2009) versus Habana Province (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #40

#10 (January 18, 2009) versus Metros (Latinoamericano Stadium, Havana) Game #39

#9 (January 17, 2009) versus Metros (Latinoamericano Stadium, Havana) Game #38

#8 (January 16, 2009) versus Metros (Latinoamericano Stadium, Havana) Game #37

#7 (January 15, 2009) versus Matanzas (Victoria de Girón Stadium, Matanzas) Game #36

#6 (December 28, 2008) versus Holguín (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #24

#5 (December 23, 2008) versus Guantánamo (Mártires de Barbados Stadium, Granma) Game #19

#4 (December 16, 2008) versus Las Tunas (Julio Antonio Mella Stadium, Las Tunas) Game #13

#3 (December 7, 2008) versus Cienfuegos (5 de Septiembre Stadium, Cienfuegos) Game #6

#2 (December 4, 2008) versus Sancti Spíritus (José A. Huelga Stadium, SSP) Game #4

#1 (December 4, 2008) versus Sancti Spíritus (José A. Huelga Stadium, SSP) Game #4

Several noteworthy facts about Despaigne's lengthy string of long balls might also be recorded here. Foremost is the fact that the Granma slugger has bunched his homers in a number of clusters throughout the season, including one string of five straight games in January, a second of six consecutive home run games overlapping the World Baseball Classic recess, and then a third cluster of four games out of five (with five total homers in those five contests) in mid-April. Half of his total (16) was achieved in the 57 games before the WBC hiatus and an equal number (16) in the mere 33 games that followed the shutdown. Thirteen of the homers have come in home ball parks with 19 stroked on the road. Despaigne's favorite park as expected was Granma's main venue at Mártires de Barbados Stadium in the provincial capital of Bayamo, where he bashed ten NS #48 dingers, but he also whaled three in both Guillermón Moncada (Santiago de Cuba) and Latinoamericano (all versus Metros, with surprisingly none against shaky Industriales pitching).

Despaigne's longest homer-less string was 11 games during the first two weeks of January, followed by the eight just before season's end. His favorite victims have been Holguín (5) and Sancti Spíritus (4), but he also had three each versus the Metros, Villa Clara, Ciego de Avila and Santiago clubs, and has thus homered against every team in the circuit except Havana's proud Industriales (with a pair each against Pinar del Río, Guantánamo, and Isla de La Juventud, plus single homers off of Matanzas, Las Tunas, Habana, and Camagüey). But unlike Alexei Bell a year earlier, Despaigne's slugging will not carry over as a main storyline during the upcoming Cuban post-season, as his last-place Granma ball club trailed the entire eight-team pack in the Oriental League, barely edging out Havana's Metropolitans (tail ender in the Occidental League) to avoid an ignoble distinction of owning this winter's worst overall league record.

For those of you who can't make it down to Havana, the visual "taste" of Cuban baseball will soon be available in upstate New York, at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. That institution is about to launch in its Third Floor Gallery a wonderful photographic exhibit drawn from the work of Byron Motley. As a regular traveler on the Cuban baseball scene, I can verify first-hand that Motley has done a marvelous job of visually capturing the spirit and the feel of the island national game. For those of you who are in the area, this is definitely a don't-miss experience.

The Motley exhibit, entitled "Viva Cuba Béisbol" and debuting on May 23, will run through January 2010. For a small taste of Motley's unparalleled work, visit his website at http://www.byronmotley.com/Photographer/ and click on the Viva Cuba Béisbol icon at the top of the left-hand column. Motley's work is just about the best visual record of the island's sporting passion that I myself have so far witnessed.

For only the fourth time in the past quarter-century the capital city of Havana will have neither of its league teams (fan-favorite Industriales or usual also-ran Metropolitanos) represented in the post-season playoffs that open on the island this coming Wednesday. With only a final weekend of action remaining in National Series #48, all four post-season slots in both leagues have now been determined and little drama remains to regular season competition outside of a few marquee individual statistical races. The foremost of those sidebar stories is the tight three-man battle for the individual batting crown between Yulieski Gourriel (Sancti Spíritus), Yorelvis Charles (Ciego de Avila) and Michel Enríquez (Isla de la Javentud), with all three still hovering a fraction below the .400 mark. Gourriel, seeking his first hitting title (although a few years back he was the first ever to pace the circuit in both homers and triples in the same campaign) is currently in the lead at .399 (with Enríquez at .398 and Charles standing at .395). A second important sidebar is Alfredo Despaigne's last ditch effort to overhaul Alexei Bell's single-season home run mark of 31 set only last winter. Despaigne tied the record earlier in the week but has been homer-less in the past four contests and now faces the pressures of a final three-game series on the road against tough Villa Clara pitching.

Match-ups for the first round (quarterfinals) of "best-of-seven" post-season action are as follows:

Occidental League (West)

Habana Province (1st place) versus Isla de la Juventud (4th place)

Pinar del Río (2nd place) versus Sancti Spíritus (3rd place)

(Habana Province and Pinar del Río enjoy the extra home game in these two series)

Oriental League

Ciego de Avila (1st place) versus Holguín (4th place)

Santiago de Cuba (2nd place) versus Villa Clara (3rd place)

(Ciego de Avila and Santiago de Cuba enjoy the extra home game in these two series)

Last winter's playoffs concluded with Pinar del Río suffering an embarrassing four-game sweep at the hands of Santiago, which will now be seeking its third straight league crown during this year's post-season dance. The power-laden Wasps have to be considered a consensus favorite to three-peat, despite a slow early-season start that ultimately left them trailing surprising Ciego de Avila by a half-dozen games in the eastern division. Ciego, owner of the top league record this winter at 62-25 (three games remaining), will be seeking its first-ever league title and has never made it out of the first round in its handful of previous post-season appearances.

All the playoff action can be followed in detail (including radio and television Spanish-language broadcasts) on www.baseballdecuba.com, which will feature a special post-season page complete with game reports and day-by-day statistics. This author will also be reporting directly from the scene in Cuba during a two-week-span of the playoff saga that opens on May 6 and will extend possibly as late as June 11 (depending on the length of the final series).

One of Cuba's grandest baseball legends reached another significant milestone on Saturday when Conrado Marrero (born April 25, 1911) turned a robust ninety-eight. The last living Cuban big leaguer from pre-revolution days has been quietly residing at the modest Havana apartment of his granddaughter for most of the past decade. While well into his late eighties, the indefatigable island legend was still serving as a part-time pitching coach for the Cuban League team in Granma Province. His last notable public appearance came when he tossed a ceremonial first pitch for the landmark May 1999 Team Cuba-Baltimore Orioles exhibition match in Havana's equally venerable Latin American Stadium.

Marrero's milestone places him among a small collection of baseball's most durable veteran survivors. Society for American Baseball Research member David Fleitz has made a hobby of tracking ballplayers that have lived near or beyond the century mark, and a careful check of recent Fleitz research (on "David Fleitz's Baseball Page" at www.wcnet.org) reveals only two ex-major leaguers whose current age surpasses that of Cuba's Marrero. Cup-of-coffee Brooklyn Dodgers infielder Tony Malinosky (born on October 5, 1909) is senior to the colorful Cuban icon by less than 18 months. And former Cincinnati Reds infielder Lonnie Frey was born in August 1910 (compared to Marrero's April of 1911). All three are now locked in a tight race to become baseball's sixteenth-ever living centenarian.

To North American fans, Marrero is remembered exclusively for his five brief seasons with the American League also-ran Washington Senators, the team he joined in 1950 as a grizzled 39 year-old rookie. It has often been reported that Washington owner-manager Clark Griffith erroneously believed Marrero was born in 1919 instead of 1911 at the time he signed him on, but that part of the legend is probably only apocryphal. Marrero was nonetheless anything but a novelty act during his Washington years, featuring one of the league's most devastating curves and claimed repeatedly by manager Bucky Harris to be the most valuable "stopper" on an otherwise lamentable Washington mound corps. "Connie Marrero had a windup that looked like a cross between a windmill gone berserk and a mallard duck trying to fly backwards," once noted Felipe Alou. But it was always the issue of his age (as well as his huge cigars and funky delivery) that remained the Cuban's most recognizable calling card.

For the complete story on Marrero and his milestone birthdate, see the longer article published at http://www.baseballdecuba.com/EngnewsContainer.asp?id=1420.

One of my favorite complaints involves the easy assumption of sports journalists and baseball historians that Major League Baseball is somehow the be-all and end-all of the entire diamond sport. One manifestation of this is a repeated claim that any record set in the American League or National League constitutes a new "baseball" milestone and is thus entitled to be properly labeled baseball's most-ever this or best-ever that. One fitting example of such narrow perspective is the claim of historian David Fleitz (in his on-line biography of early-1900s American League hurler Jack Powell) that the one-time Browns-Cardinals-Highlanders right-hander alone holds one of baseball's most bizarre distinctions. Fleitz writes that "no other pitcher in history has won as many games as Powell while losing more games than he won." True enough, perhaps, for the major leagues in North America. But what about some other legitimate baseball universe?

I have not searched Japanese League archives or perused the history of North American minor league play to see if this Fleitz claim about the uniqueness of Powell's achievement actually holds up, but it will likely no longer pass muster once a few more seasons of the Cuban League National Series are written into the record books. Jack Powell's undisputed North American record is soon likely to fall by the wayside under the quiet onslaught of remarkably durable and also seemingly ageless Isla de la Juventud hurler Carlos Yanes--Cuba's most remarkable present-day pitching phenomena.

On April 11 the 44-year-old workhorse threw eight effective innings during a 5-2 victory over Holguín, lifting his season's mark to 7-6 (4.97 ERA) and his bizarrely steady lifetime ledger to a break-even 229-229 and counting. Five days later the Isla de la Juventud ace worked 8.2 frames and permitted only four scratch hits, yet suffered a 2-1 defeat at the hands of league-leading Habana Province. The loss returned Yanes's NS #48 ledger to his more familiar .500 post (now at 7 up, 7 down) but also once again dropped his lifetime résumé a few fathoms below sea level. On April 22 he pulled even yet again with another victory over Holguín.

That long-standing fifty-fifty record likely explains why Yanes has only once earned a spot on the prestigious Cuban national team and thus has remained without many opportunities to display his talents outside island boundaries. His lone appearance in a major international tournament came in late 1999, when he performed as part of a largely watered-down Team Cuba--one dispatched to the Intercontinental Cup matches in Syndey minus such normal standbys of that era as Orestes Kindelán, José Contreras, Omar, Linares and company. In that single outing the wily veteran (already with 16 National Series campaigns tucked under his belt) dropped his single international decision while nonetheless posting a credible tournament 1.59 ERA.  But if he has remained virtually unknown away from native shores, in domestic play Yanes has slowly built a considerable legend that has now left its indelible stamp on island baseball history.

Part of the explanation for the shear magnitude of losses suffered by such a top-quality pitcher likely lies in his fateful assignment with an Isla de la Juventud ball club that has often been rather mediocre over most of the past quarter-century. This year's Isla squad (despite hurricane damage to its home stadium in Nueva Gerona that has prevented any local night games) is still clinging desperately to a four-place slot (the final Occidental League playoff position) with little more than a week remaining in the campaign. In 2005-06 Isla's Pine Cutters did finish a surprising 19 games above .500 (Yanes was 12-4 on the season) and claimed a rare first-place Group A finish before collapsing in opening playoff matches with eventual champion Industriales. But winning seasons have been anything but the norm for the ball club representing Cuba's least populous provincial zone.

The primary explanation, however, for Yanes's more than 450 pitching decisions spread over 26 seasons has been remarkable conditioning and also remarkable consistency by one of the island's most disciplined athletes. Yanes is hardly a junk-ball hurler (one who rarely tests his arm with hard tosses), yet he does own a remarkably smooth mechanical form that results in surprisingly little arm stress. He also possesses an unparalleled work ethic and is thus always one of the best-conditioned among the league's 400-plus top-level players. In a rare interview before Sunday's game with Industriales at Havana's Latin American Stadium, Yanes emphasized his strict training regimen and affirmed that he has no plans to hang up his spikes anytime in the near future. The soft-spoken hurler also explained to a national Cuban television audience that he has never suffered from arm problems of any kind during his two and a half decades of league action. He once more stressed his stated goal to pitch the five more campaigns necessary to reach an unprecedented 30-season career mark.

If it happens--Isla's Ancient Warrior actually does reach the three decade level--Carlos Yanes will be 49-plus when he finally retires from active competition. He will also remain one of the classic examples to be found anywhere in baseball that heavy workloads of constant arm exercise can actually extend rather than shorten pitching longevity. In the same Sunday interview Yanes affirmed that it has been his regular routine for years now to toss in excess of 200 balls daily, week-in and week-out. So much for widespread arguments about pitch counts being the primary and proven key to protecting a hurler's fragile physical health. 

Remarkable durability and substantial talent has allowed Carlos Yanes to etch his name onto many pages of the Cuban League record book, where he currently resides at or near the top of career lists in more than a dozen different pitching categories. Entering the current campaign he stood first in seasons played (25), games pitched (674), games lost (223, now 230), games started (468), innings pitched (3,637.2), batters faced (15,946), runs allowed (2,056), earned runs surrendered (1,813), hits allowed (4,035), doubles allowed (656), triples allowed (99), home runs yielded (440), walks given up (1,234), sacrifice bunts allowed (178), and sacrifice flies allowed (90). He also ranked third on the career lists for victories (223, now 230) and intentional walks (87); he was fourth in complete games (182), and fifth in strikeouts (2,072). Yanes is the only Cuban Leaguer to lose more than 200 contests and one of only six to post 200-plus victories.

Cuban League 200-Game Winners (#=active pitchers)

#Pedro Luis Lazo (Pinar del Río) 245-130 (19 seasons, through 2009)

Jorge Luis Valdés (Henequeneros) 234-166 (20 seasons)

#Carlos Yanes (Isla de la Juventud) 230-230 (26 seasons, through 2009)

Braudilio Vinent (Santiago de Cuba) 221-167 (20 seasons)

Lázaro de la Torre (Industriales) 208-139 (20 seasons)

Rogelio García (Pinar del Río) 202-100 (16 seasons)

Early next winter Carlos Yanes will undoubtedly overhaul Jorge Luis Valdés (Cuba's only southpaw 200-game winner) for second slot on the all-time list, needing only five more victories to surpass the former Matanzas star (who accomplished his own total in a mere two decades of labor). Already 33 losses ahead of the closest challenger in that department (his former Isla teammate Gervasio Miguel Govin, with 197 amassed in 22 seasons), and with no active hurler currently owning more than 130 defeats (Lazo), Yanes is also on pace to build a truly insurmountable lead in that more dubious career category.

Cuban League All-Time Leaders in Games Lost (#=active pitchers)

#Carlos Yanes (Isla de la Juventud) 230-230 (26 seasons, through 2009)

Gervasio Miguel Govín (Isla de la Juventud) 138-197 (22 seasons)

José Miguel Baez (Las Tunas) 143-172 (20 seasons)

Braudilio Vinet (Santiago de Cuba) 221-167 (20 seasons)

Jorge Luis Valdés (Henequeneros) 234-166 (20 seasons)

Adiel Palma (Cienfuegos) 139-165 (21 seasons, retired in 2008)

With Lazo's career now winding down at age 35, it is likely that the celebrated Pinar ace may have only a season or two remaining in his own storied tenure. Given that prospect, plus Yanes's announced decision to hang on for five more campaigns, it is not an unreasonable proposition that the indestructible Isla pitching machine might end up as both the winningest and losingest pitcher in Cuban League annals, while at the same time having posted more failures than successes. This would not only be a feat equaling the odd case of much celebrated Cy Young in the majors (Young's totals of 511 and 316 are the long-standing big league records), but also one that would outdo the obscure Jack Powell (career 245-254 record). And how many pitchers in any league have been everyday starters for 30 consecutive seasons (or even for 26, where Carlos Yanes now stands)? This is but one further example that not all of baseball's most remarkable feats have been performed in the retricted universe that represents the North American "major" leagues.