Ariel Osvaldo Pestano Valdés

Cuban baseball player, catcher. Pestano is considered the best catcher in the history of Cuban baseball.

He played in the National Series with the VillaClara team, the Naranjas.

He was part of the runner-up team at the Olympics in Sydney, 2000 and the team that won the gold medal at the Athens Olympics, 2004. He was part of the team that won gold at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, 1999 and in the Dominican Republic, 2003. He was part of the team that won the gold medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, and also the team that won silver in the first Baseball Classic held in 2006 and at the Beijing Olympics 2008. In 2011 silver medal, World Cup, Panama and bronze Pan American Games Guadalajara, Mexico.

He was born on January 31, 1974 in the municipality of Caibarién in the province of Villa Clara. Since childhood he always liked baseball and played it in the street by hand. His first coach Noel Guerra always helped him and continues to do so.

He went through all the categories as a baseball player until reaching the National Baseball Series where he played for 19 seasons. As a good baseball player he analyzes every game, studies his opponents and ultimately incorporates experiences.

In interviews he points out that when he plays, he tries to reconstruct in his memory how each person acted from the first inning. He considers himself an analytical player.

In 2004 he was chosen athlete of the year in team sports and was included among the ten best athletes in the country in 2006.

In 1998 he joined the national pre-selection team, since he did not have the possibility of playing in Villa Clara, making his debut with the Cuba team at the Pan American Games in 1999 in Winnipeg.

The second international competition was at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, where the Cuba team won the silver medal in the final game against the United States, whose winning pitcher was the now Major Leagues Ben Sheets, but in 2001 playing in the World Series, he obtains the gold medal.

Two years later, Cuba returned to the top of the baseball world by winning the competition, where Pestano had a modest participation. However, that same year, at the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, he hit a home run, a double and managed to drive in two runs to give Cuba the gold medal at the expense of the United States.

In 2002 at the Series of the Americas, in Mexico, he was the second best man in average of the entire league, also finishing as the best catcher of the tournament.

In his second opportunity at an Olympic Games, he achieved the best performance in an international competition when he batted for an average of .595 and won the first gold medal in Athens 2004.

At the 2005 World Championship, Cuba once again took the title, and a year later, participated in the first edition of the 2006 World Baseball Classic, in which they achieved second place, behind Japan.

Pestano with the rest of the team played the first two rounds at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the only venue that hosted more than one round in the competition.

At the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, Cuba once again won the gold medal, but that same year, at the World Series in Taipei China, they lost the final game to the United States.

He represents Cuba at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, where he won the silver medal.

In 2009 he announced that he would retire from the national team after playing in the World Series in Nettuno, Italy, but later played in the second edition of the World Baseball Classic, where Cuba was eliminated in the quarterfinals.

In 2011 he completed 13 years on the national team and with it participates in the World Cup in Panama being his sixth participation and at the Pan American Games, Guadalajara, Mexico. Already in 2012 after playing in the National Series he joins the team that goes to Holland for the Haarlem Tournament where he obtains the gold medal.

In 2013 with the Villa Clara team he wins first place in the National Baseball Series.

After his retirement from active sports he joined the Piratas de Campeche team, of the Mexican Professional Baseball League, once the negotiations with that organization were concluded. In the early days, he will serve as coach in the area in which he excelled, but will be able to play later if he passes the required exams, indicated the Cuban Federation.

To the mythical number "13" of the orange teams, he would have liked to play in the Big Leagues. He said on one occasion: "That is the aspiration of any baseball player, to participate in the strongest competition that exists in world baseball," although he clarified that the conditions of a desertion were not the way out he was looking for to achieve his dream.

"Like almost all Cuban athletes, I was also made offers to abandon my country, but I did not want it that way. It never even crossed my mind to stay abroad."