The Major League season was on the air for nearly 100 days — 99 to be exact — the length of one of the longest work stoppages in American baseball history in living memory. But, fortunately, MLB and the Players Union reached an understanding and agreed to start the season for this Thursday, April 7, when the curtains were finally lowered and the voice of Playball! in northern diamonds.
In St. Louis, the Cardinals kicked off the tour farewell to two Latin legends: Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols, while in Atlanta the current champions lost with their gold jerseys against the impetuous ninth from Cincinnati. In Kansas, the best prospect in baseball —Bobby Witt Jr.— debuted with a hit and an RBI, but in reality the most important thing was the official debut of Cleveland under the name of Guardians, after 106 years as the Indians. On the other hand, the Japanese phenomenon Shohei Othani was the protagonist of an unusual event: he threw the first pitch and was the Angels’ first batter of the season.
These are isolated events at the start of the contest, but they are worth gold for fans of the sport of balls and strikes, who just a few weeks ago lived in fear of the real possibility that much of the campaign would be canceled.
Cuba also had a presence in this Opening Daysomething that has happened uninterruptedly since 1948. It has been 74 years online with at least one Antillean player on the opening date of the season, which constitutes a record among all the foreign nations that contribute troops to the best baseball circuit in the world.
The streak began with pitcher Ramón García, on April 18, 1948, when he climbed on the mound of the duel between the Yankees and the Senators. Washington’s right-hander only worked two-thirds, but he entered history as the starting point of a string that promises to last for many more years.
In this 2022, from the outset, the chain was extended by Yulieski Gurriel and Yordan Álvarez, who were headlines with the Houston Astros in Los Angeles. There they rang their wood with two extra-base hits and celebrated their team’s first victory of the campaign.
Yordan hit a 422-foot long home run to the same center field, and became the 20th Cuban with a homer in Opening Day. The man from Las Tunas joined a list made up of Tany Pérez, Rafael Palmeiro, Tony Oliva, José Canseco, José Abreu, Orestes MinosoRomán Mejías, Yasmani Grandal, Jorge Soler, Kendrys Morales, Yoan Moncada, Tony González, Adonis García, Tito Fuentes, Bobby Estalella, Yoennis Céspedes, Leo Cárdenas, Yunieski Betancourt and Yonder Alonso.
Gurriel, meanwhile, hit a double and took another step towards 300 extra-base hits for life in the Big Showfigure that 21 players from the Island have achieved. But the most striking thing about the Sancti Spiritus is that he became the eleventh oldest Cuban to play the Opening Dayexactly 37 years and 302 days.
The record in this sense belongs to Adolfo Luque, who at 42 years and 255 days, wearing the New York Giants shirt, climbed the mound on April 16, 1933 and made a two-inning relay without allowing freedoms to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Luque is followed by Tany Pérez (40 years and 326 days), Rafael Palmeiro (40-192), Orlando Peña (40-139), Conrado Marrero (39-357), Tony Fossas (39-190), Bert Campaneris (30 -031), Mike González (38-204), Orestes Miñoso (38-137) and Tony Taylor (38-108).
As we can see, only five Cubans have worked in the Opening Day over 40 years old, and four of them are pitchers. The only position player who took the field in opening duels with more than 40 years was Tany Pérez, in 1983. Yulieski, who turns 38 in less than two months with no trace of regression, is the active player from the Island with the most possibilities He has to appear in these duels with 40 years or more.
By the way, since we are talking about the oldest players who have seen action in the Opening Day, we cannot ignore the reference to the other end, the youngest, an honor that belongs to pitcher Pedro Ramos, at 19 years and 348 days. To date, Ramos is the only Cuban who has managed to play in a season-opening game under 20 years of age, something quite uncommon in the Major Leagues, to the point that only 38 players in history have done so.
The curious thing is that Ramos did not appear for the first time in a Opening Day as a pitcher, but he did it as a pinch runner in the duel between Washington and Baltimore, held on April 11, 1955. But the story does not end there, his second appearance on Opening Day was also as a pinch runner in 1957, again against the Orioles.
More Cuban notes from Opening Day
A total of 110 players, counting position players and pitchers, have seen action in season-opening games, whether as starters, relievers, starters, hitters or pinch-runners.
That list should grow this very day thanks to Pinero Andy Ibáñez and Avilanian Adolis García, who point to starters for the Texas Rangers in Toronto. In addition, there is the possibility that Cionel Pérez from Matanzas lives his first appearance in a Opening Day if the Orioles decide to take him out as a reliever in the duel against Tampa.
In general, the best Cuban in these duels has been Tony Oliva, recently exalted into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame. The Twins player from Pinar del Rio played his first Opening Day in 1964, the year he led the American League in runs, hits and doubles. On April 14, 1964, he faced Cleveland and hit two shots in five at-bats. That was the beginning of his brilliant performances in opening matches.
In total, he played ten of these duels, and in eight of them he multihit games, with a spectacular offensive line of .425/.489/.675 and a very high OPS of 1.164. Oliva drove in 11 runs in these matchups, scored seven, had six extra-base hits and only struck out twice in 45 plate appearances.
Among the pitchers, the fight is fundamentally between Pedro Ramos and Adolfo Luque, who with more than 20 innings of work have an ERA of less than 1.30. Luque posted three wins without a loss in five starts in season openers, in which he worked 21 1/3 innings with only three earned on his account and an opponent average of .236.
But in a face to face, Pedro Ramos surpasses him. The right-hander threw in six Opening Day, three of them as a starter, and accumulated 31.2 episodes, in which he allowed four earned runs for an ERA of 1.14. Plus, he completed three games, got a shutout and hit .161.
If we go to the offensive performance in a single game, then the honor belongs to the legendary Orestes Miñoso —also exalted to the temple of immortals just a few months ago—, who on April 19, 1960 literally massacred the Kansas City Athletics.
“Mister White Sox” hit a grand slam and drove in five runs in the first half of that duel, which Chicago led with a 9-2 scoreboard. However, Kansas equalized in the ninth, but Minoso reappeared and hit another game-ending home run. Sensational walk off and to the showers.
In the end, the West Indian finished the challenge with six RBIs, a couple of hits —both home runs—, and two runs scored, all in five plate appearances. From this performance, highlight a couple of things. Miñoso was the first Cuban with two home runs in a Opening Day and after him only Román Mejías in 1962 and Yasmani Grandal in 2017 have repeated the feat.
In addition, he was the first Cuban to obtain a walk off in season opening games, something that was later repeated by Sandy Valdespino, who decided the duel against Kansas on April 12, 1966 with a single.
As for the pitchers, there is debate with two spectacular starts from Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos. The first gave Boston 15 strikeouts in nine innings in 1960, a mark that is still an absolute record in the Major Leagues. No one has managed to match it, although several have come close, such as Shane Bieber (Cleveland Indians), who left 14 rivals with the rifle on his shoulder on Opening Day 2020.
Pascual handcuffed Boston that afternoon at Griffith Stadium in Washington, to the point of limiting them to three hits and one run, the result of a home run by Ted Williams in the second inning.
However, Pascual’s competition is strong, because Pedro Ramos left the New York Yankees three hits and no runs on April 11, 1961, pitching on the road at Yankee Stadium. The most impressive thing about this outing is that the Cuban shooter had to face a batch that brought together Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris or Bobby Richardson, just to mention a few illustrious names. In total, the Mulos lineup had players who in their careers added 65 All-Star Games and eight MVP awards.
See if that opening was remarkable, that after the grouting of Pedro Ramos, the Yankees linked a chain of 65 games with at least one run until June 23, when they left them blank again. During that stretch of games on the rubber, they won 42 times and put themselves on the path to dominating the American League with 109 wins, and then winning the World Series.
This shutout by Pedro Ramos in 1961 is the only one achieved by a Cuban in the Opening Day and it was the second of a Latino pitcher in the history of these duels, after the one achieved by Puerto Rican Rubén Gómez in 1958.
