HAVANA, Cuba. – There were no surprises: The Lumberjacks were prophets in their forest, the Julio Antonio Mella Stadium. This Sunday the newly nicknamed “Eastern Nightmare” buried the attempted rebellion of the Pinar del Río tsunami with a score of 6-1to win their third Cuban baseball crown in five games, the second they have achieved in a row.
The final blow to the green-footed resistance decreed the gong the end of a catastrophic season that could be described as the worst in the history of local baseball, and which aroused more interest for the chaos generated by its organizational disarray, fraud, refereeing errors, ambiguous handling of the rules and some other blunders, than for the spectacle on the field.
A ghost referee
The storm created around referee Ricardo Companioni began on Tuesday, April 16, at the Captain San Luis Stadium, during the subseries where the teams from Pinewood of the river and MatanzasA poorly decided play by the black team, in favour of the visitors, unleashed the anger of the local fans, and the police had to intervene to prevent violence against the umpire.
The events spread quickly on social media, and with all the spotlights on Vueltabajo, Campanioni disappeared from the scoresheets in the two consecutive rounds. In his place was the local referee Maikel García, who did not belong to any of the working groups of the series. Supposedly, Campanioni was serving a sanction for the refereeing error committed.
His reinstatement occurred on Saturday, April 20 as a referee for the second pad. What took everyone by surprise was that, upon his return, Campanioni would not be Campanioni, but Roberto Rodríguez, as announced over the stadium’s sound system and noted on the score sheet of the match, being a false identity that does not appear among the 48 official referees registered in the tournament. Instead, the name appeared correctly in the matches published on the website of the Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB).
Although spectators noticed the impersonation and the press reported what happened in live broadcasts, the authorities closed their ears and mouths until several days later when Campanioni’s group of referees was working on the Matanzas-Isla de la Juventud series, at the home of the former. It was then that the storm came upon them.
As explained by Campanioni himself on the specialized page For the Rubberwho used a false name was part of an approved strategy aimed at confusing fans. On Saturday 27th, for the first time, the National Commission spoke out on the matter to deny that any referee had acted under a false name.
From then on, the governing body of the discipline unleashed a chain of back-and-forth worthy of a soap opera, but which failed to dissuade the veracity of the facts, which, days later, they had to accept.
The organization?
And if we’re talking about organizational sloppiness, the champion had to endure a different story. On March 25, Los Leñadores were supposed to go to Isla de la Juventud to face the Piratas. The boat that was supposed to take them from the port of Batabanó to Nueva Gerona broke down and the team had to return from the south of Mayabeque to the capital late at night.
It was thought that the unforeseen situation would be resolved quickly, but that was not the case. Sidelined from the tournament due to transportation problems, the team from the northeast had to resort to the Changa Mederos Stadium to train and stay in shape at a time when they were going from strength to strength in the fight for qualification.
Finally, five days passed until the people from Las Tunas were able to set out on their challenge with the people from Pinar del Río.
The Pirates were also affected by transportation issues when they had to play in May with Villa Clarain another of the many subseries affected by the energy crisis that the country is going throughBut when it comes to games suspended due to fuel issues, the disaster was much bigger.
An example was the postponement of the match between the teams of Pinar del Río and Artemisa on June 18 at the Estadio Capitán San Luis. The match had to be rescheduled because the gasoline destined for the teams that mow the grass on the field, which was not fit to host the game, arrived late.
The energy crisis also took its toll on the team Matanzaswho during his visit to Santiago de Cuba was exposed to power cuts at the Costa Morena Hotel that prevented the athletes from resting.
Assaults on referees
Luis Cesar Valdés, head of arbitration at the National Baseball Commission, recognized In April of this year, the local judges were of a mediocre level, “from average to below.” Precisely, the performance of those in charge of administering justice this season has had enough material to cut.
Campanioni blew the lid off the scandal that arose from his identity theft, a scam that in a way obscured the origin of the cause that led to the fraud – that the fans did not recognize him – to avoid a possible new attempt at physical or verbal aggression against him.
The biggest of all the scandals occurred on Sunday, April 25 at the 5 de Septiembre Stadium in Cienfuegos, in the match between the locals and the Camagüey team, and which resulted in several sanctions for an episode of violence against Yovani Simón Martínez, umpire of home that would have made a mistake in the decision of a decisive play.
This time the loudest decibels of violence did not come from the public, but from the herd of “Cinfueguero elephants.” The players’ protest sparked a brawl that demanded police protection for the referees, who had to be escorted out of the stadium.
Days earlier, at a press conference, Juan R. Pérez Pardo, president of the FCB, had acknowledged other attacks on referees by fans who went out to intercept them outside the stadium.
Repercussions on the fans
“It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. In the end it was entertaining with the referees’ troubles, the fights and the absurd things that happen in baseball in this country. The quality of the games is out of the question, it’s more fun to watch the neighborhood kids play taco,” he commented. CubaNet Carlos Noel Mendoza Palacios, a fan from the capital.
Yendri Zulueta Chong expressed a similar perception, saying that the tournament had taken several steps backwards compared to last season. “There is a feeling that we are at the limit, that we cannot go any lower, but then you come up against a Series 63 where teams have to stop the games due to a lack of bats, because the fields are grassy and you have to give up,” he said.
The most absurd thing, Caleb Rodríguez Medrano pointed out, is the attempts to hide certain situations “when everyone has the Internet and news flies like the wind through social networks. The same thing that happened in Pinar with the fake referee… It was a tremendous embarrassment what they did. First they said it was a lie and then they wanted to use a razor to wipe the salt off their backs.”
