César Prieto and his Cuban Record: Going for More?
In a weekend he will forever remember, Cienfuegos second sacker César Prieto shattered Rey Isaac’s 25-year-old hitting streak of 37 games, and positioned himself at 42, now looking at the big prize: Joe DiMaggio’s 56. However, the cloud of controversy and heavy criticism seems to haunt him, as some people refuse to acknowledge his feat stating that the quality of Cuban baseball has been diminished over the years with the defections and the disappointment. Those critics — by the way — haven’t stopped for a second to think how difficult it is to hit safely in more than 35 games.
César Prieto has had to battle with a frozen game (a game in which he had been hitless and which stood in the middle of the streak), the exhaustion of day-only games, and several seven-inning matches, as is the rule whenever there is a double header. He has also done it as a young player that has all eyes on him while playing with empty stands.
Only six players in the long history of Major League Baseball have hit safely in more than 40 games. DiMaggio got at least one hit in 56 straight games in 1941 (the year Ted Williams hit .406 and Joe finished third in the American League behind him and Cecil Travis), Wee Willie Keeler did it for 44 games in-a-row in 1896–97, Pete Rose also had 44 but in 1978, Bill Dahlen had 42 in 1894, George Sisler hit in 41 games in 1922 and finally Ty Cobb got hits in 40 straight games in 1911. The occurrence has also taken place in the minor leagues, with Joe Wilhoit hit safely in 69 straight games in the Western League in 1919, a record that has been threatened only by DiMaggio himself, when he had 61 straight games in the 1933 Pacific Coast League season. Seventeen other players have done it for 40 games or more in the Minor Leagues. In college baseball there are four players that stand out: Damian Costantino (an army reservist before college who never played professional baseball, had 60 games in 2001–03), Robin Ventura (a familiar face for Cubans, 58 games in 1987), Kevin Pillar (54 games in 2010) and Tommy Stewart (54 games in 1995).
To understand how difficult it is, we may see that many times a batter has hit better than Joe DiMaggio’s .357 in 1941, including two batters in his own circuit that very year. The great Ichiro Suzuki, a hit machine, has his longest-standing streak at 27, and we are talking about a hitter who had a season with 262 hits in 162 games (in a different year). The amazing Tony Gwynn, one of the purest hitters in the history of the game, does not hold the record for his San Diego Padres, as it is in possession of Puerto Rican catcher Benito Santiago at 34. George Brett is also sidelined in his Kansas City Royals, as Whit Merrifield recently tailored a 31-game streak for two seasons.
In Cuba, the record was set in 1994–95, and was ended when Rey Isaac could not touch eventual Major Leaguer and World Series Champion Orlando “El Duque” Hernández in four at bats. His accomplishment vaulted him to the Orientales for the first time in three years and into the Cuban National Team as well. Several players have started challenges against Isaac in the past, including the recently named American League Most Valuable Player, José Dariel Abreu (also from Cienfuegos), but they all fell short even from Lázaro Vargas’s 31 games. Let’s not forget that Abreu himself had a much more dominant season later on; and so have Frederich Cepeda, Alfredo Despaigne or Yoenis Céspedes; but the icing on the cake has been star Yulieski Gurriel, who left Cuba while hitting .500 for the season, a record that will probably stand forever. None of them — extremely dominant as they have been — had threatened Isaac, mainly because of “one game” in which they didn’t have the luck.
This is the type of streak that can be mentioned despite the level of play, because hitting is sometimes a very unlucky activity: a batter can easily go 0-for-5 in a game in which he hit five solid line drives that were caught by well-positioned or highly skilled defense. And I am not mentioning the defensive shifts — although it would be stupid to do so with a spray hitter that sends balls to all fields. Another factor worth mentioning is the incidence of scorekeepers. Cuban baseball recently got into a lot of debate as Noelvis Entenza was credited with a no-hitter after the fact when the official scorer “reviewed” a diving stop by the shortstop and ruled it an error (official scorers that respect themselves would have never ruled that an error); César Prieto can easily be the victim of exactly the same type of poor scoring on an infield hit. Last but not least, we need to worry about unsporting teams: a pitching staff that gets him out for the first or the first two at bats and decides to pitch around him just to see the streak come to an end by their hands.
That is why I refuse to diminish his accomplishment. We are talking about the player that is currently the hottest hitter in Cuban baseball, toying around pressure and hitting the ball with authority at a .412 clip. We just need to enjoy this moment and see him play hoping that he goes even further.
