Havana Cuba. – On January 14, 1962, during the beginning of the First National Baseball Seriesthe dictator Fidel Castro He said, exultant, that the renunciation of professionalism -verified the previous year- was “the triumph of the free ball over the slave ball”. That conception was extended to the rest of the sports disciplines, making it clear from that very early date that sport would be one of the most important bastions of Castro’s propaganda.
For a long time, the performance of Cuban baseball players in national series and foreign tournaments proved Fidel Castro right. Baseball on the Island had more than enough quality to compare with its counterparts in the professional leagues, a fact backed by several gold medals in the Olympic Games, Intercontinental Cups, World Championships, and Pan American Games.
In the 1990s, however, the first signs of the decline of the national sport began to appear with the emigration of valuable athletes, many of whom achieved the dream of trying out in the Major Leagues. Castro’s ego for the triumph of the Cuban ninth in that second game against a mid-level selection of the Baltimore Orioles, deflated shortly after with the illegal departure of several players who had starred in the idyllic chapter.
Gone was the golden age of national sport. Time did its thing and bad politics did everything else. Today the supposed “free ball” falls before any “slave baseball” squad, and it doesn’t even do so honorably; but rather receiving beatings, such as the 20-3 score that the Leones de Caracas imposed on the Farmers in the recently finished Caribbean seriesa professional tournament to which Cuba returned in 2014, after decades of absence thanks to Fidel.
In the last three years it has been copious the exodus of cuban baseball players, of all levels, who seek to carve out a future in the once demonized professional baseball. The high officials who should make the “free ball” work continue to prioritize lamentation, propaganda and bureaucratism, while postponing the structural changes that no longer admit delay, if they want to save something from what in other times was the reason of pride and happiness for the Cuban people.
Six decades after that decision made by Fidel Castro, Cuban baseball has ceased to be a reference among its peers, the Antillean athletes that occupy the headlines play in professional leagues outside of Cuba, and each international tournament plunges their home pastime into a well. bottomless humiliation.
