Triple kill

Hey, I've been waiting to write this reference and tell you a story in my next Cuba National Series column, but I really can't wait. While I'm telling you what happened, I wanted to know how many times you've seen a triple play at the ballpark.

Now I can remember some of the ones I've seen over my years, first as a fan and then covering baseball.

The first one that comes to mind was five years ago, during a tour of the Industriales team through the province of Camagüey. The Toros de Camagüey led the standings and would receive Industriales at the Cándido González stadium. I particularly like working there. Among the stadiums of the Cuban National Series, it has very comfortable press boxes. There is always a great baseball atmosphere in the surrounding area.

Figures from the Toros' past frequently travel to watch the games. During those three afternoons, I talked with retired players that I followed when I began to become passionate about baseball. Former Camagüey first baseman during the 1990s and 2000s, Loidel Chapellí Sr., was one of them. I also remembered past baseball moments with right-handers Luis Campillo and Fernando Tejeda, who led the Toros' starting rotation in each playoff classification. Tejeda was surprised when I reminded him of endless details of the night he threw a no hitter against Industriales at the Latinoamericano stadium.

I was there.

Tejeda's pitching gem was the night of January 22, 2004. I still remember what we could call the hit of contention, a ground ball by Antonio Scull that shortstop Alexander Ayala couldn't control. The connection was marked as an error from the beginning, but Scull himself thought that the Official Scorer would reconsider his decision. “I was surprised,” Scull told me years later, during his time as hitting coach of the Metropolitanos team, about the error recorded by the decision of my great friend José Lázaro Barral, the Official Scorer of that historic game.

Tejeda, as was characteristic of his pitching sequence, did not stop attacking the strike zone. Throughout the night in the duel against right-hander Yadel Martí, Tejeda walked only one opponent and struck out four. The Industriales were hitting their pitches, but they couldn't hit with enough solidity or genius to break the no-hitter. Tejeda's battery mate, catcher Pavel Bernal, hit a double that drove in the game's two decisive runs at the start of the fourth inning.

The score with a 2-0 advantage for Camagüey did not change.

Yasser Gómez was the last out of the game, hitting a fly ball down the left field line, and Tejeda will never forget that moment when Norberto Concepción caught the ball. After that talk with Tejeda on a small concrete bridge that leads to the press boxes, I quickly settled in next to the narrators of Radio Coco, the station that calls the Industriales games. With just under five minutes to go until I heard the call of play ball, I thought I had delayed preparing my score sheet. But, 5 hours and 45 minutes later, I knew that the time had been enough, even for the blue ink in my pen to run out while I was writing my notes: Industriales and Camagüey played 14 innings!

There were 345 minutes of baseball filled with tension, expectation and the usual bustle of the fans in the baseball park. In front of their great fans at home, the Toros had the chance to beat Industriales six times between the ninth and 14th innings, but they couldn't. And one of the key plays that contributed to the Capital Blues achieving 9-7 success was a saving triple play at the end of the eleventh inning. The Toros had the bases loaded, with Jorge Luis Peña stepping up to the plate.

Camagüey had gone five innings without scoring a run, but they focused their hopes on Peña's flashes of power. However, Peña was dominated again: he hit a strong grounder for third with the bases loaded, and the result could not have been worse. Industriales third baseman Jorge Enrique Alomá fielded the grounder, stepped on the third base bag and threw to second. Quickly, second baseman Narbe Cruz got a force out at second, and pivoted to first.

The “controversial” part of the play arose next, because the second umpire, Norge Hernández, declared the runner trying to reach second out due to interference. That third out finally combined to complete the “triple play” that saved the Industriales team at the end of the eleventh inning.

Things that happen in baseball! So I imagine you've probably seen a triple play perhaps more controversial than that. Well, certainly, the reality is that the triple play is a play that has no preparation. Although out chances are common every day, no one can predict what will happen. Most of the time, not even the defensive team is prepared to react.

It just happens. In fact, here's what the numbers tell us: Before this season, in more than 2 billion plays involving defensive players, just 125 triple plays had been recorded.

So, of course, no one is going to think, “well, this is a great situation for us to do a triple play if possible.” Baseball doesn't work like that, and the reality is that the games almost always surprise us all.

Some triple plays end up being the work of chance, bad refereeing decisions, or even the result of multiple errors made by the runners. And one of those occasions became the news of the day on Saturday afternoon, when the Crocodiles completed a triple play against the Pirates of the Island. On the Facebook account of “Los Cocodrilos de Matanzas”, which usually performs a great coverage job in the Matanzas games, the video of the play was published.

I think that there you can see without many setbacks that the runner was safe at first. The first baseman’s umpire, Janet Moreno, did not appreciate it that way, which led to another painful referee error. On this topic, many fans have rightly complained on Social Media, and more errors in refereeing decisions are being exposed every day. I don't think the issue of refereeing errors can be improved, much less resolved when only one of the eight daily games is broadcast on television.

There are also many inexperienced referees, who are in full development in a tournament where the demands of the job require greater rigor than other national baseball events. I don't think any of the umpires are happy with these types of rulings and mistakes that could affect the outcome of a baseball game. But, with the responsibility of providing justice in the National Baseball Series, they will definitely have to continue working to raise the level.

Although I know that the first person who will be upset is Janet Moreno, for not being able to be fair in her work, we have to archive the 132nd triple play in the history of the National Series.

The Island Pirates have had several of the best baserunners this season, but the Crocodiles have been able to stop them. Photo: Yadrián Rivero.

The triple play performed by the Matanzas defense was the seventh in this 63rd Cuban National Baseball Series, and was also recorded as the new record for a season. The previous record for a single season was six, first recorded in 1994 (33 CNS), and years later in 2015 (54 CNS).

The defense of the Crocodiles and the Pirates have been the main protagonists in the triple plays this year. Matanzas has completed two and has allowed one, while Isla de la Juventud has three made and two allowed. By the way, Matanzas not only got even for the triple play that the Pirates played against him last Tuesday: those led by Armando Ferrer won on Saturday with a 17-0 super knockout in just six innings.

Now the Crocodiles have won their last three games, and it looks like they may begin to wake up after this ‘triple kill.’