Santana did what he does best, he's a good pitcher and we were waiting for him to come back [out]. But then he was finished, he was taken out. They decided to take him out, but he had control over the way he was pitching.

Everybody saw Cuba as a smaller team. They saw other teams as greater. Yet here we are. Nothing is impossible. You will see in the final. We're prepared for this mentally and physically.

Our message is already out there from our international competitions. I think we showed people that baseball is spoken here, baseball and nothing else.

This is the greatest victory in the history of Cuban baseball because our opponents were major-league players.

I think the message has been delivered. Baseball is baseball in all parts of the world ? be it in the big leagues, be it amateur. You have to value baseball as such. It's not about the price of the player but the heart with which the baseball is played. Our team is a team that has fought for unity. The soul of our team is unity. There aren't any stars.

They have major-league players. So people know now that we can play against major-league players.