Cuba, Korea Baseball Match Planned

The national baseball team of Cuba, the best among amateur baseball and the second-runner up in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) held March this year, will visit Korea for the first time to play Team Korea.

The Cuban team, known as the “red devils,” will play a friendly match this November in Korea against the Korean national team led by Coach Kim Jae-pak (Hyundai). The Cuban team is visiting Korea en route to Taiwan for the 16th inter-continental championships. Lee Sang-il, the deputy director of Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), who is visiting the U.S. to discuss the venue of the next WBC, is still working out the specifics, including the exact date of the game.

When the WBC ended, and fans were left hungry for more international games (A matches) KBO Commissioner Shin Sang-woo said, “We will look forward to holding national-level matches like they do in soccer.”

One KBO official said, “We chose Cuba after deliberating. They play excellent baseball and are also well known. We excluded the U.S., because we were skeptical of the players’ willingness to visit Korea and the feasibility.”

Team Korea, a team that dominated the WBC, did not get a chance to meet Cuba during the classics. The Korean team had to make do with a place in the best of four, because they were beaten in the semifinals by Japan, a team that Korea beat once in the preliminary round and once again in the final matches. After beating the Dominican Republic in the semifinals, Cuba lost to Japan in the championship match.

Although Cuba was known as the best in amateur baseball, the team rose to one of the best in all baseball by defeating North and Central American teams.

Cuba won 25 times, including nine straight wins after 1984 in the Baseball World Cup (formerly known as Baseball World Championship) and won the gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

The only time Korea beat Cuba was in a 4-3 win at the preliminary round of the Australian Intercontinental Match in 1999.

uni@donga.com