Inaugural World Baseball Classic held in San Diego
The championship round of the 2006 World Baseball Classic was held at Petco Park from March 18-20, 2006. The games on the field were only part of the show. Japan defeated Cuba 10-6 in the final game.
From The San Diego Union-Tribune, Monday, March 19, 2006:
HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE FAR AWAY FROM HOME
By Chris Moran and David E. Graham, Staff Writers
The game on the field was like a piece of home for Cuban fans, and they made Section 112 at Petco Park their living room.
They bought seats but rarely used them, instead frolicking in an aisle or just standing and bending toward the field to rain cheers on the team from their homeland and jeers on the team from the Dominican Republic, which met in yesterday’s first semifinal game of the World Baseball Classic.
The fans in 112 brought their own percussion section — claves and maracas, even a frying pan that Orquidea Diaz of San Diego beat for most of the game with what appeared to be a knife-sharpening rod.
The constant clamor culminated in a foot-shuffling victory procession through the terrace on the thirdbase side. Dozens of Cubans and Cuban-Americans left the park chanting, “Somos los mejores” — “We are the best” — after the Cuban national team defeated the Dominicans, 3-1.
Last night in the second semifinal, Japan defeated Korea, 6-0, and will meet Cuba in tomorrow’s final of this inaugural tournament, which started with 16 teams. Rain suspended play in the eighth inning for about 45 minutes.
“Cuba is number one in baseball,” Cuban-born Cesar Galvan of City Heights said after the early game, virtually breathless from cheering. “The political is not my problem. Cuba is number one in baseball.”
Fans didn’t attend to talk politics, and no one mentioned Cuban President Fidel Castro unless specifically asked about him. There were few handheld signs at the game, but when a woman draped over a balcony a Cuban flag with the slogan “Viva Cuba Libre” on it, security quickly made her put it away.
A more typical statement was the Cuban flag painted on the bald head of Ariel Torres, a Cuban who lives in National City. No slogans, just the red stitches of a baseball seam painted into the flag.
Politics came more into play outside the park. That’s where Sergio Mayea of San Diego identified himself as “delegate and military commander” for Alpha 66, a 45year-old exile group that advocates Castro’s overthrow.
Mayea and some other ex-patriates, members of the anti-Castro group Junta Patriotica Cubana, talked about their dream of a free, democratic Cuba.
Mayea said the Junta had hired a plane to fly an antiCastro banner over Petco Park, but it never appeared. Mayea said he was told it was not allowed to enter the airspace near the park and so instead made a pass around Mission Bay.