The Cuban-Dominican pitcher Raúl Valdés wins bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

August 10, 2021

After 13 years of absence from the competition under the five rings, baseball returned to the Olympus and although the presence of a representative team from our island was greatly missed in the competition, the truth is that Cuban presence was not lacking on the awards podium.

Raúl Valdés, born in Havana almost 44 years ago, made his debut in 1996 with "Los Vaqueros" in National Series, forming an unforgettable trio of opening pitchers alongside José Ibar and Lemay de la Rosa, who led that province to be among the best in the entire country.

After 6 seasons, two of them with 13 or more victories, the left-hander from the old Havana province left the country and in 2005 signed with the Chicago Cubs organization, but it was not until 2010, with the New York Mets, that he made his Major Leagues debut.

After 5 seasons and an intermittent stint, in 2014 he saw action for the last time in the MLB, but only to continue his wandering through various countries and teams throughout his extensive career.

Dominican Republic, Japan and Mexico are some of the destinations where this baseball globetrotter has left his mark of great quality. But without a doubt it has been in Hispaniola where he has achieved the greatest accomplishments.

With the different representative teams of this island close to Cuba, Raúl Valdés has been present in 6 editions of the Caribbean Series, with a record of 4 victories and one loss and winning the title in three of them (2010, 2012 and 2020).

Naturalized Dominican, this veteran of a thousand battles represented the country that took him in throughout the entire qualifying process for the Olympic Games and there he achieved his team's first success in the tournament, against Puerto Rico, where he allowed two runs in seven innings and struck out 7.

In his second outing against Canada he allowed four runs in seven innings, but did not get a decision. In total Valdés finished with a 3.86 ERA in the tournament and 12 strikeouts in 14 innings of work.

In the Olympic tournament, Valdés pitched five and two-thirds innings in which he only allowed one run against South Korea, although he came out without a decision after reliever Luis Felipe Castillo could not hold the lead.

In the bronze medal game, against the Korean team itself, Valdés took the ball again and although he was not at his best, his team showed brutal offense to dominate the previous champions, 10 runs to 6.

The Cuban left-hander had allowed 2 runs in the first 4 innings, but in the fifth he was punished hard and unable to get outs, he was charged with the 4 runs of the inning, leaving the game down 6×5.

Despite that, his team responded with a historic 5-run rally in the eighth to tie the game and thus manage to win the bronze medal, the first Olympic medal for Dominican Republic, not only in baseball, but in any team sport. Certainly a tremendous result.

There were no surprises in the final standings, the medalists were the winners of the World Classics, Japan, gold, United States, silver and Dominican Republic, bronze, showing that today, at the national team level, they are the three best teams in the world.

For Dominican Republic it was the fifth medal in these Olympics, 3 silver and 2 bronze and they rank 65th in the medal count by country. For Cuba, which was always among the finalists in each of the first 5 editions (1992-2008), Raúl Valdés represents that, at least under another flag, the baseball of the island is present on the Olympic podium once more.