SAN DIEGO – The veteran catcher slammed the baseball to the dirt, the final act in a sequence he might have known had beaten his Cuban national team.

He’d prodded three of his pitchers in the third inning alone. He’d begged for strikes from the prodigy left-hander who could throw 100 mph but too often missed the mitt, and turned out he’d put the ball right on their bats. He’d asked another lefty to settle that third-inning crisis, and two more runs scored. And finally he’d gotten a strikeout, the third out played against the clamor of Japanese throats and hearts echoing Sunday afternoon in a half-filled Petco Park.

Yes, he’d held that baseball for an extra moment, considered rolling it to the mound, and instead allowed himself an act of frustration, unusual for the seemingly dauntless Cuban club.