The President did not demand us to win the tournament, but he told us that we should play well, and teach the world how baseball is played in Cuba. |
These are things that simply happen in the game of baseball. If this were to occur on a frequent basis for Cuba, this would be rather worrisome. But this is not the case. |
They're not interested in millions. We don't have prisoners. Simply, our athletes are besieged because people want to turn them into merchandise, but they want to play for their country. |
This is Cuban baseball. Cuba is not gone. We're still here to play and whoever wants to beat Cuba will have to sweat it out. |
This is what we wanted to see -- this is Cuban baseball. Our boys recovered from the knockout that we suffered. Today was great, wonderful baseball. |
This team is the world champion and the Olympic champion. We didn't get that for free. |
This wasn't a gift. We won this. The Cuban team simply had to come and show the quality of Cuban baseball. |
We are running out of time. We have just 20 days. |
We know the Asians. We have played against the Asians, we know how the Asian teams play, and they're great players. They put everything into the field, great effort, very similar to Latin American players. |
We lost the battle but not the war. The war begins Sunday. |
We should not underestimate the Dominican Republic. |
We want to be a part of the tournament, and I think Cuba would be an ideal place because it already has experience organizing baseball events. |
We're sport ambassadors, and we're not involved in politics. |
What's happened so far in the Classic is history. For us, the tournament begins today. In the first round, we gained some valuable experience. |
When I said that this was a team made of men and not names, I didn't mean that the others were not men. They're as manly as we are. We're all men and good men and hard men and manly men. |