The Cubs team Holguin tops the standings of the 64 National Baseball Series (SNB), thanks to a stable performance that draws the attention of quite a few at this point in the tournament.
Fans and specialists highlight the good preparation carried out by the group, as well as the good management of the management team, but the dedication of the players also draws attention, an aspect that could be related to extra-sports issues.
Cuban Television journalist Pavel Otero referred to this possibility through a publication on his Facebook profile, who revealed that the players from Holguín receive monetary support from a private entrepreneur in the province.
According to the communicator, fan Carlos Armando Buch Reyes, owner of the GYM DE YENI gym located in the northeastern territory, gives money as an incentive to the players who stand out the most in each subseries.
Otero adds in his publication that these payments range between 5,000 and 8,000 Cuban pesos (CUP) and that at the end of each month a player could round up a profit of between 20 and 30 thousand, which contrasts with the 3,500 that they officially receive as a salary due to their connection with the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation (FCBS).
It also clarifies that the initiative involves the entire staff. “Currently, almost all the players on the team have received weekly and monthly incentives, logically with different figures, depending on the quality and results of each one,” the publication highlights.
In turn, he indicates that this contribution, which estimates around 300 thousand CUP per month, is generated by the profits from the gym he owns and from “a private job he has with a Russian company because that is his other nationality, in addition to being Cuban.”
The idea of monetarily stimulating the players was put into practice before the start of the current campaign, since the entrepreneur had done something similar with the Sultanes de Holguín team, which disputed the national title of the Champion Clubs tournament against Pinar del Río at the beginning of this year.
Extended idea
In one way or another, Holguín has become a reference for initiatives outside the state level that benefit sports activity in the territory, mainly in baseball and its main national tournament.
In his publication, Otero also refers to the actions carried out by the La Campana sports club, which with the cooperation of its members has been responsible for the purchase of food and grooming modules for the Cubs.
This serves as a complement to the stimuli that the team receives from the companies in the territory that “sponsor” each player, plus other attention or “details” that the provincial authorities have had with the team in the “emulation checks.”
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Suspicion and transparency
Pavel Otero’s publication garnered signs of support from baseball fans on the island, but also warning signs about legal aspects linked to these initiatives.
“It is possible that perhaps some reader of this article may suspect the legality of Carlos’s income, but I am totally sure that if the Holguín entrepreneur himself asked me to make his story public, it is because he has nothing to hide. Presumably everything is totally clean and legal…”, the journalist wrote in his first post on this topic.
In a second entry he clarified that he considers these cash deliveries as “help”, thus removing any relationship with sponsorship, a possibility that is included in the recently approved Cuban Sports Law.
“Carlos’s action with the players from Holguín is only selfless HELP without expecting anything in return,” he emphasizes.
Recently, the island’s sports authorities stated that the new regulations to regulate sports opened the doors to the possibility of sponsorship to the private and state sectors, as a way to relaunch this activity strongly affected by the serious economic crisis.
