HAVANA, CUBA.-The national team of baseball from Cuba he just lost his match against the Japanese team, and thus does not qualify for the final phase of the third edition of the Premier 12 tournament, which held one of its groups, precisely the one in which Cuba played, in Taipei, China.
On this occasion, the Antillean team, as happened in the last World Classic, began the tournament by losing its first two games, against the Dominican Republic and South Korea, which already put the team in a very difficult situation to meet its prediction of move on to the next phase of the competition.
This Cuban team also had a good number of players who play in foreign leagues, such as those in Japan and several in America, but not in all cases these players performed what was expected of them. On the other hand, several athletes who shone in the last round were rejected from joining the team. Cuban national seriessuch as Yordanis Samón, William Saavedra and Guillermo Avilés, among others. A decision by the leaders of Cuban baseball that unleashed criticism from specialists and fans of our national sport.
This failure in the Premier 12 confirms the decline experienced by Cuba in the sport of balls and strikes at the highest level. We must not forget that the last time baseball was part of an Olympic event, in Tokyo 2021, Cuba was not present as it did not qualify for that competition. It was the first time since the appearance of this sport in the Olympics Barcelona 1992that the Greater Antilles was absent from that contest.
On the other hand, the exodus of players in search of opportunities to play in foreign leagues continues. Recently, during a trip to Mexico to develop an exhibition game against a team from that country, several young players with great futures in this sport defected from the Cuban delegation. Among them, the pitcher from Pinar del Río Branlis Rodríguez and the Guantanamo outfielder Over Cremet stand out.
If we talk about boxing, another flagship sport, recent experiences have not gone well either. The discipline came out through the narrow door in the last youth world championship that took place in the republic of Montenegro, formerly a member of Yugoslavia.
For the first time in these fairs, the Cuban representation left without gold medals in competitions of this type. Only two silver medals were won by Cuban boxers, who were surpassed by boxers from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, nations that have displaced Cuba from world supremacy in the sport of fists. This is a poor performance that has set off alarm bells among Cuban technicians, since these boxers who now fought in Montenegro are the island’s hope for the current Olympic cycle that will culminate in the Los Angeles 2028 event.
Here, it should be noted that this setback by the youth team joins the anemic performance of the Cuban boxers in the Olympic event in Paris 2024where only Erislandy Álvarez was able to win the gold medal. That was the second worst performance of Cuban boxing in Olympic competitions since the 1972 Munich event. Only in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Cuba did not win any title, were Cuban boxers below what they achieved in the French capital.
These setbacks in two disciplines that represent the purest tradition of Cuban sports, to which are added the poor performances recently shown by judo, athletics and volleyball – once bastions of national sports – undeniably demonstrate that the crisis of Cuban society It also extends to sporting activity.
