40 Quotes by Higinio Velez

He was happy just like the rest of the people in Cuba. We're happy because of how far Cuba has advanced in this Classic, and now he just is waiting for us to do our best in the field to show the world and show everybody else how good baseball is played in Cuba.

I see it as something that really hurts me. It bothers me because we admire the way they play. We would have even liked to face the United States in this tournament.

I said it two or three days ago. I said this was only the very beginning of the Classic, and it was not over. People started saying that Cuba would be out and I said to be patient, and just wait. Now we've shown what Cuba can do.

Our team doesn't give up. Our team continued to fight with courage but it was very difficult.

Our players, when they play, don't think, I'm going to break my hand. Because the player that has money sometimes thinks, What happens if I break my hand?

Some of the players are gone, but ... not all of them were stars. If we go back before the revolution, you will see that a lot of the Cuban players were playing in the major leagues. ... We have a large number of players.

Let me say that our pitchers now have a disadvantage because our pitchers usually have games where they pitch 125 pitches. And here they were limited to 65, 80 or 95. So our starters are used to playing seven or more innings.

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.

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.