In the 64th National Baseball Series, the bad news falls out of our pockets. Games confiscated due to improper lineups of players, games suspended due to transportation problems or because athletes could not rest due to blackouts, violent events inside and outside the diamond…
But amid the misfortunes of the Cuban classic of balls and strikes, rays of light sometimes emerge. In recent days, for example, pitchers Yadián Martínez and Pavel Hernández have made headlines by delivering two games without hits or runs, one of the most exclusive events in any baseball.
Yadián Martínez signs the first zero hit, zero runs of the 64th National Series
Yadián filled the board at Nelson Fernández Park, in Mayabeque, with zeros, where the Pirates of the Island could not even tickle him last Sunday, October 12. For nine innings, the right-hander controlled the situation and only had a small slip when he walked shortstop Kristian Soulary in the third inning.
The Hurricanes ace had not realized that he was giving no hit no run, until a teammate approached him in the seventh inning to comment. “Shut up!” Yadián responded, as if to scare away evil eyes. From that moment on, already on notice, he felt the pressure more.
“It is one of the feats that many pitchers would like and you feel more tense as the game progresses. In the seventh inning, the same boy (Luis Balón) who was the last out of the game, gave me a fly ball behind first that hit two centimeters from the line,” confessed the Mayabequense in an interview with Pavel Otero.
Yadián’s no-hitter, which ended with a spectacular fielding by Frank Alfonso diving headlong to catch a hit in right field, was the first by a Mayabeque team pitcher in the history of the National Series, according to the files of statistician Benigno Daquinta.
The specialist himself also tells us that this was the second clash without hits or runs at the Nelson Fernández stadium, where only Santiago’s Norge Luis Vera had achieved something like this, on January 20, 2001 during the 40th edition of the domestic classic.
Pavel Hernández, at the height of legends
And 48 hours after Yadián Martínez’s jewel in Mayabeque, industrialist right Pavel Hernández followed a similar path in Artemisa, where he was close to completing a perfect game. The shooter silenced the Cazadores’ teams in the 26 de Julio park, where he finished seven almost immaculate innings in the knockout victory (12-0) of the capital’s Lions.
Pavel retired the first 18 batters he faced in six innings, but in the seventh, already with a score of out of action, he lost the perfect game by a walk against patrolman Yassel Veranes.
“Perhaps the anxiety affected me a little, knowing that you are about to do something historic. The batter also asked for time and that confused me and took me out of my rhythm a little,” the right-hander explained to journalist Yunel Hernández.
Artemisa had always gotten in the way of Pavel, who had five defeats (one in the National Series and four in the Elite League, two of them in the semifinals) against the Cazadores: “They are a team that knows me well, we clashed a lot and I have met several of their players in youth and U-23. Because of that knowledge, they have been difficult for me,” the right-hander noted.
With this feat, Pavel Hernández joined a select group of seven pitchers who have achieved at least two no-hitters in the history of the Cuban classics of balls and strikes. That list is made up of some legends of the national pastime such as Juan Pérez Pérez (the only one with three games without hits or runs), Aquino Abreu (the only one to achieve it in consecutive outings), Rogelio García, Mael Rodríguez (the only one with a nine-inning perfect game), Freddy Asiel Álvarez and Geonel Gutiérrez.
The no-hitters count reaches 68
Next January 16 will mark the 60th anniversary of the first game without hits or runs in the history of the National Series. Aquino Abreu, in the Centrales uniform, was the protagonist against Occidentales, who failed to decipher the enigmas of the law in the Augusto César Sandino park.
Since then, there have been 68 no hitters in the Cuban classics of balls and strikes: 60 in National Series, seven in Selective Series and one in the postseason of the first Super League.
By the way, 19 games without hits or runs occurred during the era of the aluminum bat, in which, as a curious fact, only three of these games ended before nine innings. And I mention this detail because of the 15 most recent no hit no runs, ten have been super knockouts or knockouts, which is why they concluded in the fifth or seventh inning, respectively.
