Dominicans win it their exuberant way

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They are too exuberant for some, bouncing around like high school kids at a rally, celebrating even the smallest achievement, a single, a strikeout.
  
They are too talented for everyone, kids from the land that they proudly declare produces more ballplayers per capita than any other on the globe.
  
Baseball is in the soul of the Dominican Republic, serving both as recreation and, in a place of extensive poverty, an opportunity to find fame and wealth. It was so strange then — and so bewildering to the citizens of the DR — why they had done poorly in the World Baseball Championship in 2006 and 2009.
  
That failure has been corrected, emphatically. The DR, as the players refer to their home, won the WBC on a rainy Tuesday night along the shore of the Bay, defeating Puerto Rico, 3-0, and going through the tournament unbeaten in its eight games.
  
“I had enough of that shame of not having a trophy like this,” said Tony Pena, the Dominican manager, as he stared at award in front of him and several players. “And thank God this group of men was able to accomplish what we wanted, which is to put our country on top in terms of baseball.”
  
They are millionaires, so many on the Dominican team. They are stars in the bigs, Jose Reyes, Robinson Cano, Hanley Ramirez, Nelson Cruz. They play for the Marlins and the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Rangers. But this was their team. This was their country.
  
That’s why Reyes gave those fist-pumps when he led off the first with a double. That’s why Erick Aybar almost strutted into second on his double in the fifth. That’s why the entire squad, holding on to a mammoth Dominican flag, red, blue and white, danced around at game’s end.
   
Maybe they get on other teams’ nerves, but it’s a matter of sheer enjoyment, of full involvement, of unfettered excitement.
   
“This ball club is about emotion,” said Pena. He is a coach on the Yankees, and he’ll return to that position in a matter of hours. After the celebrating.
  
“We showed emotion every single time. And when Jose got to second base the first time and put the fists up way high, that was telling the other guys, let’s go.”
  
Considering the lack of an Asian team and the weather — rain was forecast and arrived early on — the attendance of 35,703 was quite impressive, about 6,000 below AT&T Park's capacity.
  
Fans had to flee from the open areas to protected ones, under the overhang, when the downpour arrived, but the game went on, and certainly so did the Dominican Republic, which appropriate for the setting, won on pitching. As in 2012 did the Giants, who call AT&T home.
   
If the other team doesn’t score, the adage goes, the worst you’ll have is a 0-0 tie. The other team, Puerto Rico, not only didn’t score in this game, it didn’t score in the previous game of the tournament against the DR and not since the fourth inning of the game before that, a stretch of 23 innings.
 
“You look at the Dominican roster,” said Edward Rodriguez, the Puerto Rico manager, “the arms that they have. Not only the starters, but that’s a big league bullpen right there.
   
“We didn’t score in those many innings, but the last time I checked there was not many that scored against that team. Because when you take a guy throwing 94, 95 and then bring in a guy throwing 97, 98, that’s pretty hard to score against.”
  
Samuel Deduno, who spent part of the 2012 season with the Minnesota Twins — and part in the minors — started for the Dominicans. He pitched five innings and allowed only two hits. Then came the relievers, first Octavio Dotel, who’s been around forever, then Pedro Strop, Santiago Casilla (of the Giants) and finally Fernando Rodney, who recorded his seventh save in the eight games.
  
“Samuel Deduno did a great job for us not only tonight, but the whole WBC,” said Pena. “He pitched three games for us, and he pitched three successful games . . . Since I said earlier, when we started the WBC, our bullpen was the root. We would play five innings with the starter and then turn the game over to them.”
   
Robinson Cano of the Yankees — a free agent for the coming season — was hitless Tuesday but ended up batting .469, a good  reason he was chosen tournament MVP.
  
“We have superstars,” said Cano, “but God knows when things happen. This is a great feeling. Tony did a great job. We have this great energy and have always been praying.”
  
It was playing, not the praying, that enabled them to sweep through the Classic and led Dominican president Danilo Medina — watching the triumph along with virtually everyone in the nation — to call Pena and offer his congratulations.
  
“The Dominican Republic,” said Pena, “were hungry for this moment.”
  
Now that the moment has passed, the players, coaches and manager head back to their respective teams. Or will they?
 
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Cano, laughing. “Tonight we are going to celebrate. Tomorrow we are going to celebrate. Thursday we will go back to spring training.”
  
As champions of the world.

Baseball means the world to the Dominicans

By Art Spander   

SAN FRANCISCO — Maybe it doesn’t mean that much in America, which just happens to be where the game was created. Maybe it ranks somewhere below the Heat keeping their streak alive or Tiger and Lindsey admitting they are an item, and they certainly are.
     
But this World Baseball Classic, which will come to an end Tuesday night, with the Dominican Republic facing Puerto Rico at AT&T Park, is huge in those two places where the populations are small, two places where baseball matters more than the land where it once was called the national pastime.
    
All you had to do was watch the way the Dominicans bolted out of their dugout — well, the Giants’ dugout, but Monday night it was the Dominicans' — after they beat the Netherlands, 4-1, in their semifinal.
   
All you had to do was listen to the shouts and repetitive honking of horns from the Dominican fans, wrapped in their flags and their joy. This is their moment, as it will be Puerto Rico’s, a chance for two Caribbean baseball hotbeds to rank as the best.
   
The WBC officials must be disappointed in the way the United States has supported the Classic. Or not supported it. The crowds were big a weekend ago in Miami. But in San Francisco, they went from marginal — some 33,000 for Sunday night’s semi between Puerto Rico and Japan — to miserable, 27,527 on Monday night.
  
The Giants, the World Series champions, have sold out every game for two straight years at 41,000-seat AT&T. There was no spillover. No connection. There was only ennui, although not from the Dominicans, or the few Dutch who wore their orange sweatshirts with the word “Driemteam” on the front.
   
The Dream Team, in effect, is the Dominican Republic. It is 7-0 in the tournament. It is full of millionaire major-leaguers such as Jose Reyes, Robinson Cano, Hanley Ramirez and Nelson Cruz.      
  
“Those are great hitters,” said Hensley Meulens, who was the Netherlands' manager and also is the San Francisco Giants' hitting coach. “They rise to the top when it comes to playing big games like this.”
  
Most of the Netherlands' players are also Caribbean islanders, from Curacao and Aruba. Some you know — Andruw Jones, Wladimir Balentien. Most you don’t. They hung in behind a pitcher who never has made the majors in 10 years, Diegomar Markwell. But eventually the big bats wore him down, the Dominicans scoring all their runs in an explosive fifth of line drives and pop flies.
  
“They put some great at-bats on us today,” said Meulens.
    
On the mound, they put some great pitches on them. The Netherlands got a run without a hit in the first off Edison Volquez. And then no more runs and only four hits off Volquez and three other Dominicans, including Fernando Rodney of the Tampa Bay Rays, who recorded his sixth save in this WBC.
  
“I think they only had a couple of starters,” said Meulens, “and then most of their guys were bullpen guys. It showed today.”
   
The Netherlands won both of its games against the Dominican in the 2009 WBC, but that domination was destined to end. “They came to play this year,” said Meulens. “And that’s why they’re undefeated. And that’s why they’re going to the finals.”
 
Japan won the only two other World Baseball Classics. Now the championship will go from the Far East to the tropics. “Whoever wins,” said Dominican manager Tony Pena, a Yankees coach, “it’s going to be the Caribbeans. It could be Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, but it will belong to the Caribbean.”
   
The Dominican players take the Classic personally. It’s their Olympics, the chance to prove their skills and dedication, to show basically that, at this game, they are the best in the world.
  
“When you’re representing your country, and you’re making your country proud of you, that’s amazing,” said Volquez, the Dominican starter. “That’s awesome.”
  
He’s 29. He knows English well. He’s with the San Diego Padres. But the question was asked in Spanish, so he responded in Spanish, which was then translated.
  
“This is not something you can do every day,” Volquez continued. “And we’re able to win. It’s like we’ve been on this one mission, just winning and winning as a team.”
 
Winning as a team. Winning as a nation. Winning because it means so much.
   
“I think we have a lot of unity on this team,” said Pena. “That has brought us to where we are right now.”
   
They’re one game from the championship of the World Baseball Classic. That might not mean a lot in the United States, but it means everything to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Japan tries a Three Stooges routine

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It was a version of one of those old baseball jokes, a Three Stooges routine without laughs. Isn’t there a manual that advises it’s never a good idea to steal second base when there’s another teammate already there?
   
Japan knows how to play the game, precisely, carefully. There is an ethic, a tradition of repetition that leads to perfection, a style that made the nation the World Baseball Classic champion the only two previous times the tournament had been played.
    
But the odds and Puerto Rico caught up with Japan on Monday night at AT&T Park, the Puerto Ricans winning, 3-1, to advance to Tuesday night’s final against the winner of Monday’s Dominican Republic-Netherlands game.
   
Puerto Rico was in control from the very start on this chill evening, scoring a run in the first and then, after a massive seventh-inning home run by Alex Rios, going in front 3-0.
   
“They were superior pitching and hitting,” said the Japanese manager, Koji Yamamoto. “I could see an opportunity.”
    
So, with a run in, one out and Hirokazu Ibata on second and Seiichi Uchikawa on first, Yamamoto called a double steal. It would have worked, or let’s say could have worked if only Ibata hadn’t stayed at second while Uchikawa sped there. Oops.
  
You’re only allowed one man on each base.  Except in comedy films. Uchikawa was out. Yamamoto presumably was out of his mind after the tactic, but that isn’t true. “I wanted to move the runners,” he said. “I don’t regret it.”
   
Ibata did. He took a few steps toward third and then realized he’d never make it so dashed back to second. Uchikawa didn’t know where to go, so he went no place, stopping between the bases. Rally finished, if it even started at all.
  
So, Puerto Rico, with a history of great players — Roberto Clemente, the Alomars, Orlando Cepeda, who was at the mound for the first pitch even though he didn’t throw it — but a lack of success recently, proves it still knows how to win.
    
And Angel Pagan, who will be out there in a few weeks wearing a San Francisco Giants uniform, gets another chance for the Puerto Ricans as a center fielder in Triples Alley at AT&T Park.
    
Japan had the crowd, maybe two-thirds of the announced 33,683 in the ballpark by the Bay. The fans came with their flags and noise-makers and enthusiasm. “I really felt their support,” said Yamamoto, the manager. Puerto Rico, however, had the edge.
    
“Their pitchers were really good,” said Yamamoto through a translator. “It was hard to seize the opportunity.”
   
Their pitchers, six of them, began with Mario Santiago, who in six years had never been in the majors and last year played in Korea. But his resume belied his performance against Japan, as he retired the first 10 batters before giving up a single.
   
“Now,” said Santiago, “I’m back to the states to accomplish my dream of playing in the major leagues.”
   
First the accomplishment of another dream, to bring a title to his homeland. “I’m really happy,” he said. “I know the people in Puerto Rico must be so proud of our team that we’ve come so far.”
  
They made the semis, of course, by defeating the United States, where the World Baseball Classic doesn’t seem to mean as much as it does to the other small nations, especially those around the Caribbean where the sport is almost religion.

There were enough Puerto Ricans in the stands, with their passion and their flags, if not in the same numbers as the Japanese. When pinch hitter Kazuo Matsui flied out to Pagan in center — a perfect ending, for San Francisco as well as Puerto Rico — horns honked and cheers resounded.
   
On the field, the Puerto Ricans were celebrating in a huge mass of happiness. The Japanese, class all the way, stood on the third base line and in union took a final bow, turning the park over to the ecstatic winners and, as usual after night games at AT&T, the swarming seagulls.
  
Rios is a legit big leaguer, with 25 blasts and a .304 batting average in 2012 for the White Sox. Atsushi Nohmi came in to pitch the seventh for Japan. The first batter he faced, Mike Aviles, singled. The second, Rios, smashed a ball halfway up the leftfield bleachers.
  
“It was a very exciting at-bat,” said Rios. “The pitch I hit, I saw it earlier in that at-bat. He threw that change-up and then repeated the change-up. That’s the one I saw. I guess I put a good turn on it.
  
“It was a very emotional at-bat. The whole tournament has been very exciting.”
  
And thus far, very successful.

Newsday (N.Y.): Ambidextrous Pat Venditte limited to left hand for Team Italy in WBC

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

PHOENIX — Pat Venditte has been to Italy, if a while ago. Omaha, Neb., where he grew up, has one of the largest Italian festivals in the Midwest. So it was understandable that he would try to pitch for Italy in the World Baseball Classic -- if only with one arm.

Read the full story here.

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