By Kirk Kenney

SAN DIEGO—Baseball misspoken here.

The World Baseball Classic was created to bring cultures together, but something’s been lost in the translation.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a game.

Press conferences here have been almost comical on several occasions when answers from managers and players haven’t remotely matched up to the questions posed to them.

When it comes to misinterpreted rules, however, it is no laughing matter.

Just such a misunderstanding cost Cuba some members of its pitching staff in Monday night’s game against Mexico.Under the WBC’s rules and rule modifications, it states that “a pitcher must: Not pitch until a minimum of one day has passed since he last pitched, if he threw 30 or more pitches when he last pitched.”

In other words, throw 29 pitches or fewer and you could come back the very next day. However, the Cubans’ understanding of the rule was that a pitcher could throw UP TO 30 pitches without having to take a day off.

In doing so in Sunday’s game against Japan, the Cubans were left short-handed in the bullpen in a win-or-go-home game with Mexico.

“I think that the decision was correct,” Cuba manager Higinio Velez said through a translator after Monday night’s 7-4 victory. “There was a mistake that somebody had. There is a document which is an official ruling for this game, and it is in English. . .

“Seems that this gentleman from the technical commission had confusion, and it is in writing. I didn’t bring it, but I think all the teams have it. But it reads that a pitcher that is throwing up to 30 pitches is ready to pitch for the next day . . . So there is a disclosure there about a poor translation, but we were told to follow this card, and at the end of the day there was a mistake right there . . .

“They apologized to us, and we do recognize here in public that all of these officials have been respectful, and they apologized. So there was a mistake, and we agreed not to use pitchers. That’s basically what happened.”

Velez said all this in a media room that sets up like this: Managers and players up at the podium, media members seated before them in rows of seats and translators sequestered in sound-proof rooms that resemble something from a 1950s game show.

Media members are handed headsets and instructed to tune to one of four channels: Japanese on Channel 1; Korean on Channel 2; Spanish on Channel 3; English on Channel 4.

The microphone is handed to someone in the audience, the question is asked, translated into the appropriate language for the particular player or manager, answered and filtered back out in one of the four languages.

After going through this procedure the response, more often than not, is: “Can you repeat the question?”

It also leads to other rather disjointed responses, such as this to and from Korea’s In Sik Kim:

Q. You said Mexico people, how do you evaluate their level of players? As a Korean representative team, have you seen that they have improved so much?

A. Mexico has a very strong—as they see their batters, they have long batters, eyeballs, as far as we know, and one who is working in Korea to play in Korea, they are — they usually run a long fly ball here, they have strong team.

Thank goodness no one has been asked to explain the infield fly rule.