Premier 12: Cuba sets a course for Japan

The announcement of the team to the WBSC Premier 12, a tournament featuring the highest-ranked national baseball teams in the world, marked the beginning of Team Cuba’s journey through always stormy waters, albeit its goal is clear: making it to the Tokyo Dome in Japan, where the top two teams from each of two competing groups will play for the medals and the prize awarded in this third edition.

To get there, however, the Cubans will have to overcome the obstacles in their group—based in Chinese Taipei and also made up of the Dominican Republic, Australia, South Korea and Japan—and come up with their best performance in the short history of these events, at first sight a very difficult task.

Barring the Dominican team, whose best players are engaged in their professional league this month and will therefore miss out on the Premier 12, the rest of Cuba’s contenders have assembled most of their professional figures.

The Cubans finished sixth in the 2015 tournament—won by South Korea—and, disappointingly so, tenth in the second edition in 2019, where Japan prevailed. Both countries are in the same group as Cuba’s this time.

Pessimistic on account of Cuban baseball’s results in recent times, the best of which was a decorous fourth place in the 5th World Classic, the fans in the island wonder whether their players will reach the so-called Super Round, regardless of their recent hard training sessions and their high spirits following what head coach Armando Johnson called the “pleasant headache” that selecting 28 players from a 60-strong pool entailed.

The Cubans leave today for South Korea, almost a month before the tournament, which will help them beat jet lag on time and allow them to play a few games with local teams, including the national one, and ditto when they travel to the venue.

Even if the 3rd Premier 12 will be a serious challenge to Team Cuba, it’s captain Alfredo Despaigne’s assertion that the fans will not get up early during those days will hopefully come to fruition.

Notching up a place among the top four teams seems a pipe dream, but we all know that in baseball, as in life, nothing is impossible.