Baseball at the Olympic Games has featured extraordinary pitchers such as Orlando “El Duque” Hernández, José Ariel Contreras, Pedro Luis Lazo, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Roy Oswalt, Ben Sheets, Chien-Ming Wang, Hiroki Kuroda, Yu Darvish, Stephen Strasburg, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, among other greats.
However, what the flamethrowing Maels Rodríguez achieved in Sydney 2000 was truly exceptional;
Four wins, 13 3/3 innings pitched, 0 runs, 0 err, 0.00 ERA, 22 strikeouts, 0 home runs, 188 average, 45.8 strikeout rate, and fastballs that reached 100 mph. The Sancti Spíritus native’s ability to strike out batters was simply devastating.
Rodriguez is undoubtedly a legend in the Cuban National Series. The native of Villa Clara, Cuba was the first pitcher in Cuban League history to eclipse triple digits on the radar gun when he accomplished the feat on December 8, 1999 in a Serie Nacional game.
The Villa Clara franchise deemed the hurler to small to pitch, so the hurler ended up pitching for Sancti Spiritus and this is were the legend begins. Not only did he throw some serious heat, but he also had a 92 mph slider to accompany his blazing fastball. In Serie Nacional XXXIX he led the tournament with 263 K’s in 178.1 innings.
In his six seasons in Cuba, he had a record of 65- 45 and struck out 1148 strikeouts in 938 innings. Rodriguez also posted an ERA of 2.29 and batters hit .177 against him. An arm injury kept him from signing an MLB contract when he defected from Cuba in the late 90’s. Today he runs the 100 MPH Club, where he trains kids on the art of pitching. During the off-season he works with current and ex-major league pitchers such as Luis Danys Morales and Yoan López, passing on his wisdom to the young flamethrowers.