NETTUNO, Italy.— It doesn’t matter that the games were held in seven countries and more than 20 cities, from the icy Swedish town of Sundbyberg to the warm Messina in Sicily. The 38th Baseball World Cup had Europe as its venue, but America led on the field.

Suffice it to reaffirm the above by taking a look at the winners’ table. The three medal-winning teams, and five of the eight finalists, were from nations on the American continent.

The United States, Cuba and Canada took the medals. Puerto Rico and Venezuela finished fourth and seventh, and one representative each of Oceania, Europe and Asia completed the group of eight that competed in this Italian city.

The 38th Cup was the most demanding of these tournaments in the last 35 years, with a schedule that obliged the eight best teams to play 15 games in just 20 days, a tremendous pace given changes in country and climate. Our players, to cite one example, went in a matter of hours from the warmth of Barcelona to the cold of the three Dutch cities, and dug their spikes into seven different fields.

For any other team, making it to the final of a tournament in which 22 nations competed would be a success. And despite the fact that there is nothing to be ashamed of in finishing second, after having fought for every game and having gone down fighting for the gold, our baseball should not be satisfied with this outcome, much less for the second consecutive time.

Training included a series of 16 games in several provinces and then the Cuban team participated in Italian Baseball Week, where it played five times, for a total of 21 games. While not ideal, it is pretty close to what the coaches say a team needs in order to be in shape.

Even so, our batting failed again. Under .300 this time, with incomprehensible highs and lows: 10-0 in the debut against Puerto Rico; 5-4 vs. Spain, 2-1 with just 3 hits against Australia; 4-1 vs. Nicaragua after five innings without a hit. It was also incomprehensible to see Frederich Cepeda and Yoennis Céspedes, who stood out in the 2nd World Classic — the first with an average of exactly .500 and the second with 458, with six extra base hits (EBH) among his 11 hits — fall so far in this World Cup, with Céspedes, from Granma, even going to the bench.

No matter how many times manager Esteban Lombillo changed the lineup he never found a first batter. We don’t have one; that’s the truth. And that is why it was extremely hard for us to move up on the scoreboard, because we weren’t putting runners on base at the start of the game. In most of the games, it was offensive play without hits: if the fourth one up batted, the fifth and sixth didn’t; when the second got onto base, it didn’t produce anything, because the first one had made an out.

The statistics accompanying this commentary show that once again, we are depending on pitching to advance, despite what, in my view, is a poor team tactic: to only take nine pitchers and not have a left-handed closer for situations like the one in the seventh inning against the U.S. team, with its seven left-handed batters.

I wonder — not just now; I have for a long time — what is the point of taking a third catcher who doesn’t play. Or a fifth outfielder who only goes to bat sporadically. We were the only team to have so few pitchers, when in modern baseball, a large percentage of games are won by relief pitchers and closers. In a decisive game, winning it cannot be left to Lazo and Vera – the only survivors of the ’98 World Cup, right here in Italy—no matter how well the two of them did this time, as they have before.

Concepts and strategies need to be reviewed, a change that should begin with the National Series, which needs improvement. Qualitatively superior work is needed in the tactics of pitchers and batters, the first with a childish concept of the strike zone, the second having become eternal "waiters" for good pitches with a good count.

It wasn’t all negative. Alfredo Despaigne became the sensation of the tournament, with his 11 home runs in 15 games. Freddy Asiel and Miguel Alfredo demonstrated more than enough quality for prevailing at this level. There is a new generation of baseball players. All they need is the possibility of developing in order for Cuban baseball to be No. 1 again.