Category: Oakland Athletics

by Amaury Pi-González

SAN JUAN PUERTO RICO– At Hiram Bithorn Stadium. The Cuban champion Vegueros de Pinar del Rio, won the first Caribbean Series of Baseball for Cuba since 1960. The Cuban team didn’t wait for President Obama and the Castro’s dictatorship to re-establish relations, they took matters in their own hands, as Cuba beat Mexico 3-2. The first Caribbean Series took place in Havana, Cuba in 1949, Cuba won it, and then dominated for the next ten years, but in 1961 Cuba’s Fidel Castro declared Cuba a communist state and barred all professional sports in the country. This happened because Cuba broke relations with the John F.Kennedy administration.

It was a home run in the eighth inning by Yulieski Gourriel that decided the game and the series for the Cubans. Dozens of major league scouts were in San Juan, Puerto Rico following this series. The Cuban squad lost two players who defected last week and asked for political exile, 19 year old pitcher Vladimir Gutiérrez, who was the Rookie of Year in the Cuban League in 2014, and 30 year old shortstop Dainer Moreira. They did not hang around to see their trophy, but will file papers and start their inevitable journey to the Major Leagues. The Dominican Republic were the favorites, Cuba’s victory is considered something of an upset. Venezuela and Puerto Rico were the other teams in the tournament.

Fifty-five years have gone-by since Cuba won the popular Caribbean World Series. In 1960 neither the Oakland Athletics or the San Francisco Giants had won a World Series for their Northern California cities. The Giants were 2 years old in San Francisco and the Atléticos were the Kansas City A’S. 1960 was the last year that the Havana Sugar Kings of the International League (AAA) played and won that league. Of all Latin American players these days, the ones from Cuba have a great advantage, as many of them rarely go through the minor leagues, but come directly from Cuba, after they defect,to play in the majors. Cuba’s Frederic Cepeda the 34-year old veteran outfielder, who played in Japan last year, won the tournament MVP.

In 2014 the Cuban team had an early exit, so this was a very sweet victory for the Cubanos since they returned to this Caribbean classic. The 2016 Caribbean Series is going to take place at Estadio Francisco Micheli in La Romana, Dominican Republic.

Even prior to Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro birth, baseball was the #1 and most popular sport in the largest island in the Caribbean. Baseball was introduced in Cuba in 1864, and Cubans helped spread the game throughout the Caribbean. Currently, professional leagues exist in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. The seasons last from October to January, and since 1949 the winners of each of the four leagues have competed in the Caribbean Series each February.

Amaury Pi-González will begin his 38th season as a Major League Baseball play by play announcer as the Spanish Radio Voice for the Oakland Atheltics and also Fox Sports West TV Play by play for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Amaury was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2010. Amaury does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–Jack London Square would be the ideal location for a new Oakland A’s Stadium as Major Baseball League Commissioner Rob Manfred said he would like to see the A’s get a new stadium in short order. The Jack London location would be the ideal location but as we know we don’t live in a perfect world. It’s not a surprise their not going to be in San Jose who just recently lost a lawsuit to Major League Baseball to obtain the right to move the A’s to San Jose and now the city is prepared to appeal the case in the U.S. 9th District of Appeals Court.

Oakland’s new mayor Mayor Libby Schaaf says she would entertain the idea of a new stadium for the A’s but also Schaff said that she will not allow one dime of public funds to be spent on the new stadium. To take this issue with San Jose further, San Jose is not even in the picture, so you have the choice of rebuilding the Coliseum which actually is an ideal or Jack London Square.

I was told years ago by the most unlikely source former A’s outfielder Rickey Henderson who came in the pressbox in Oakland and told me after I asked him about the problems in the Oakland Coliseum. Henderson said, “look man all they have to do is rebuild this place and make it look like it was before.” They built that cement monstrosity called Mount Davis in centerfield and that’s due to come down.

Maybe it should be named Rickey Henderson Park because Rickey was the first guy who told me that and that wasn’t a archaic idea but it makes a lot of sense. The A’s won’t be able to move out of Oakland, there’s not going to be any contraction in other words the A’s aren’t going to be dismantled. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred likes the idea of a new stadium in Oakland, the A’s aren’t going to relocate.

So what do you have? You have two locations the one now at the current Coliseum site, or possibly Jack London Square. Schaaf is optimistic I don’t blame her she wants to start off on the right foot and she wants to keep the A’s in Oakland. The City of Oakland is going to lose the Warriors that’s a given in a couple of years or so. The Raiders who knows, so the city of Oakland if it’s the Mayor or a politician are the best threat you have to keep the A’s they can also try and generate more revenue.

The A’s play 81 home games compare to 10 home games for the Raiders and 40 or so in basketball and now A’s owner Lew Wolf said that they would build a new park but they never said they would build it in Oakland. They said they would build it in San Jose or if they can’t they would rebuild the Oakland Coliseum or build at Jack London Square.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–As in previous articles I wrote that Cuba is the only country outside the US and Canada to ever have a professional baseball club in a regular league, affiliated with Major League Baseball. Until 1960 when Fidel Castro told John F. Kennedy, the US and the world in a speech: “Cuba will be a Marxist-Leninist state until the day I die”. The Havana Sugar Kings were one of the eight teams in the old International League until 1960.

That league also had teams in Toronto, Buffalo, Richmond, Rochester, Columbus, Miami and Montreal.
What would have to happen for Cuba in order to have another professional team, even maybe this time in the Major Leagues? For starters the most important thing they need totally new political leadership. There is only one boss in Cuba: the government. The people there are told what to do, what to say(or not to say)where to go to get their food allowance and so on.

Of course there is no infrastructure, no Major League quality stadium in place today, a flight from Miami to Havana is less than 30 minutes. My Aunt Violeta used to live in the US and used to visit my family in Cuba, and as I remember, she would travel via Ferry boat,(Miami-Havana-Miami) in which you could put your car, and then with a permit drive it in Havana or anyplace in Cuba.

The memo never arrived to the Castro’s, Fidel and Raúl, that communism has collapsed, that it doesn’t work, that even in China(who’s government is communist)they are big capitalist players in the whole world. For those of you old enough, you probably remember when Bob Hope used to make jokes about stuff that said: “Made in Japan”. Well that was decades ago. Today nobody makes fun of stuff made in Japan, as a matter of fact they are #1 with Toyota as the biggest car manufacturer in the world.

With China, same thing might happen, they are developing so fast and making stuff very cheap right now, with the world’s largest population. Hard not to see all the stuff we buy that says “Made in China”. But that could change in the future. Raúl Castro, who is now President, was made Chief of the Cuban Armed Forces, years ago when Fidel could think for himself, he was lucid and would make four to five hours speeches, so long that many in his own communist party, would fall asleep during his speeches.

Remember in 2013 the San Francisco 49ers “who have it better than us?” That slogan by then coach Jim Harbaugh, applies today to the rulers in Cuba. Fidel and Raúl and the two-thousand or so communist party rulers eat very well, can travel anyplace they wish, have nice homes, what embargo? There is no embargo for them. Two days after President Obama said that the US would lift the embargo, dozens of Cuban dissidents were arrested, some later released.

I was 16 and living in Cuba when Fidel made some of those speeches, I remember I had to go to bed to get up early in the morning to go to school, and I would listen to some of those speeches and really fell asleep. I really didn’t understand what communism was, to take from the rich to give to the poor and all that, redistribution of wealth, all that I knew is that the Havana Sugar Kings were no more, that things were changing, that one day Fidel abolished all pro-sports in the island.

While the top rulers of Cuba have all the privileges, and their is no blockade for them, they can get anything the want, the Cuban people have to live with food rationing and other goods rationing All that stuff that I heard Fidel in his speeches about all of Cuban being equal and nobody ruling over anybody, was a bunch of caca. In Cuba everybody is poor, and the government is rich.

One thing that keeps Cuban sane, is their great sense of humor, in or out of the island. I once read a cartoon in a Miami newspaper which read, that Fidel Castro was once making a speech, saying that no Cuban should go to bed hungry, then one little guy in the corner shouted “Fidel I go to bed hungry”, and then Fidel replied: “Well, then the solution is to stay awake, do not go to bed”. Cubans joked that Fidel Castro had a response to every criticism, of course he is always right and 11 millions Cubans are not.

As I remember today those hectic years(I lived through the revolution, Batista leaving Castro taking over)I didn’t understand much about politics, but I was really upset that I could not listen to the games on the radio when the Havana Sugar Kings played. Their games were heard in Cuba, that upset me the most. After 1960 the Havana Sugar Kings were gone! Eliminated, not because the Major League teams(who ran those affiliates in the International League) extracted the team from the league, but because the Cuban government made the decision to eradicate all professional sports, including baseball, always the most popular in the island.

We had dictators in Cuba prior to Castro, but they never “nationalized” or took baseball away from us, Cuba always had professional sports, even before the Castro’s were born. I want to make this point very clear, the Havana Sugar Kings were not taken away from the International League by that league, or by the Major League teams, but by a final decision by the radical Cuban government.

The current government could have said many years ago (and made the first move) that they wanted to re-establish relations with the United States, and-in return- they would open up Cuba to the rest of the world. But they never said that. Some people come to me and tell me “so and so is in Cuba” like this was a great tremendous achievement, when in fact, if you are a US citizen and have a US Passport you can fly to Cuba from Mexico, Canada, Spain and many other countries. There is nothing heroic about going to Cuba, neither is it to see the caliber of baseball in that country, which after the USA was the best in the world decades prior to the Castro’s.

So maybe destiny will have the Oakland Athletics moving to La Habana, Cuba in 2020, but then again the Giants might claim Cuba as part of their territorial rights, after all the hated Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Havana in the spring of 1947, the historic year when Jackie Robinson was about the break the color barrier and the end of the Negro Leagues was at hand. However, in 2020 Cuba might still have the ball, they have never initiated anything, with such arrogance they like to tell the world that they have beaten the US and the embargo, when in fact they have actually beaten themselves, destroyed a country that until 1960(you can research this it is documented) was one of the most advanced countries in all of Latin America.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–Four of the five California major league teams made it to the playoffs in 2014, that is a first. If all California teams were in a “California Division” this is the way they would have finished last season (prior to playoffs) 1-Angels 98-64, 2-Dodgers 94-68, 3-Athletics 88-74, 3-Giants 88-74, 4-Padres 77-85. The San Diego Padres were the only California team that did not advanced to the postseason. Is this California’s golden age for baseball? A strong case can be made, especially during the past few seasons, since the balance has shifted from the East to the West in both leagues.

How about World Series winners for our California teams? The Dodgers are still on top, with a total of five World Series championships, followed by the Athletics with four, the Giants with three, the Angels with one, and the Padres, still searching for their first. It took the Los Angeles Dodgers only two seasons to win their first World Series championship, after playing in Los Angeles for the first time in 1958, they won it in 1959. For the Oakland Athletics, who moved from Kansas City to Oakland in 1968, they did in five years as they won their first of four in 1972. For the Los Angeles Angels, who were born in LA in 1961, it took them 41 years to reach the top, when they won it in 2002, while for the San Francisco Giants, who moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, it took them 52 years to win it for the first time, in 2010.

How about periods of dominance? The Oakland Athletics won three consecutive World Series, 1972,1973 and 1974, that’s three in three consecutive seasons and is the only team to accomplish such dynasty in California. The Los Angeles Dodgers won three World Series in a span of seven years, 1959, 1963 and 1965. And the Giants have won three World Series in a span of five years, 2010, 2012, and 2014. The Oakland Athletics became the first team in the expansion era to win three consecutive titles, led by a pitching staff of Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Ken Holtzman and Blue Moon Odom. Their offense was also one of the best in baseball, led by a young Reginaldo Martínez Jackson(Reggie). Of course you can throw the word “dynasty”all over the place in a very subjective matter, but nobody has been close to the New York Yankees in that regard, not only because they have won 27 World Series, most in history, but because they ruled baseball in various different decades.

Loading and Unloading for 2015:

Four of the five California teams, were extremely active in the recent Winter Meeting held in San Diego. The reigning champs San Francisco Giants were mostly the “spectators” here in the west. The Giants still could use another experienced starter, since nobody knows what Tim Lincecum is bringing in 2015. They will need a very healthy and effective Matt Cain, coming off surgery, and Superman MadBum at his best, plus another right handed bat, preferably an outfielder.

This off season(to date)the Oakland Athletics, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres were the most active. For starters, The San Diego Padres will have a brand new outfield with Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Justin Upton, among other new players, while the Los Angeles Dodgers have a new double-play combination, at shortstop with Jimmy Rollins and second base with Howie Kendrick. The Dodgers still have the best pitching rotation in the west with the three-headed-monster of Clayton “All World”Kershaw, Zack Greinke, who is actually a #1 in most places, except with the Dodgers, and Korean Hyun-Jin Ryu.

The Oakland Athletics, no strangers to dealing in the off season, did a lot of remodeling, or cleaning house if you wish,or retooling(a much more politically correct word) with starters Jon Lester, Jeff Samardzija, reliever Eric Gregerson, first baseman Brandon Moss, shortstop Jed Lowrie and third baseman Josh Donaldson all gone in trades mostly for young talent, and some(in the case of Josh Donaldson to Toronto) in return they received third baseman Brett Lawrie. who although prone to injury while in Toronto, still an accomplished major league player.Veteran infielder/utility Alberto Callaspo was also send packing, plus Derek Norris their All Star catcher last year went bye-bye.

Hard to doubt General Manager Billy Beane, since he always seems to have “the magic touch”, getting veteran players that do not produce anyplace else to produce at Oakland, as well as unknown young talent beginning to make a name for themselves. Beane still might have a couple of deals left, before pitcher and catchers report to Mesa, Arizona and their new Spring Training facility in the middle of February.

It is just very hard for A’s fans to keep up with the incoming and outgoing players every winter. If you are an A’s fan, just buy the Oakland Athletics Jersey (plain )without name and number, and then you can buy the names and numbers as they come, and just attached to the back. However, if you are a real nostalgia fan, you can still buy all the old stuff you need.

Some 50 days, remain in the calendar until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training camps in Arizona and Florida.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary for http://www.sportsradioservice.com