The undersigned, less knowledgeable on the subject than other colleagues, has been under pressure to define his preference for the center of the country, in solidarity and respect for his family roots.

But while addressing the issue, away from the passion of the stadiums and the shared t-shirt displaying CUBA, reason forces me to make a cold analysis of what has happened to the national baseball in recent years and who deserves to win.

It is the job of specialized colleagues to make the technical argumentations, set criteria for success or errors in the team’s management, to discuss strategies on ways to organize the national league and the other elements. That is off-limits for the undersigned.

Perhaps the excitement of the nerve-breaking games and those courageous baseball players that make vibrate thousands of fans, momentarily hide the memory of the theft of athletes that has bled the Series top teams, whose most representative case is the Havana city’s Industriales.

Baseball scouts have joined the Miami mafia keen interest in destroying the national pastime and at the same time take to the U.S. Major Leagues some of our best values, luring them with millionaire offers.

Others are not as lucky, as that excellent pitcher from the Sancti Spiritus team, whose name I do not want to remember, who was helped to leave the country clandestinely and then was stranded somewhere in the continent, without fulfilling the “American baseball dream”

It is true that many of the best players from the Cuban school are now stars who wear uniforms in English, and many of their followers in Cuba are aware of their performance through the Internet. It is also true that they became rented men.

It is not clear to this commentator how much on the mark was the idea expressed by a little character as part of the script for a fictional series based on real events, who assured that they would ruin the Cuban baseball and we would have to use the land for harvesting beans.

If the sentence were true, the spectacle of this year, from the clashes between the so-called “weak teams” and the breakdown of the forecasts, is the strongest response that Cuban baseball is in good health.

Rookies fresh out of the youth leagues that manage to stop the power hitters, teams like the Ciego de Avila and Guantanamo, who fought over the odds given by the experts or the renovated Industriales, are some reasons for the sold-out sign at the stadiums gates .

The “blue” team is currently the best example that the can try it over and over but for every player stolen from the hearts of Cubans, the fatherland gives birth to twins. And with the experts’ permission, they have broken many taboos about who can play against all odds and the “good sense.”

As the popular saying goes: “the ball is round and comes in a square box”. Let the one who plays the best to win, but we can confidently say; if its good skills lead Industriales to victory, what a slap to the robbers of hope!

Source
Cuban Agency News
La Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) es una división de la Agencia de Información Nacional (AIN) de Cuba fundada el 21 de mayo de 1974.