2024-02-16 08:59:45
Text: Raúl del Pino
Foto: RL Hevia
In the midst of the baseball excitement that the final of the II Elite League has caused, national commissioner Juan Reinaldo Pérez made an announcement that left no one indifferent this Sunday, prior to the fifth game between Matanzas and Artemisa.
The highest authority in national sports revealed the intentions to celebrate an All-Star Series at the end of the current competition, between the team that is the champion and another made up of the best players from the remaining teams that play in the country, with the Victoria de Girón stadium as its headquarters.
Pérez Pardo also reported that the invitation was extended to neighboring federations such as Mexico, Venezuela or Nicaragua to evaluate the possibility of teams from those nations also participating, which would give the small competition international status.
If this last variant does not materialize, the event would only be held in the best of three matches, on a tentative date between January 27 and 31, although if the foreign presence is confirmed, the event, which will also include a Derby of Home Runs and a Little League exhibition, it could be at another time on the calendar.
Likewise, the manager added that efforts continue for the Elite League monarch to attend an international tournament outside of Cuba, and in this sense he noted that exchanges are being held with the organizers of the 2024 Antillean Baseball Cup, to be played in February in Puerto Rico.
The bar that 2023 left
In this way, Cuban baseball would not remain in a impasse until next March, the month in which the 63rd National Series is scheduled to begin. The truth is that the sports authorities of the national pastime on the island will have a complicated panorama to fill the current calendar with attractive events, after the high bar that 2023 left.
Let us remember that last year began with the (disappointing) participation of Agricultores, the first holder of the Elite League, in the Caribbean Series in Venezuela, a contest to which Cuba was not invited this year, and shortly after The country was paralyzed with Team Asere and the V World Classic.
In the second semester, before the outcome of Series 62, a Antillean squad attended the Central American Games in El Salvador, and later, another team under the name of Granma came last in the first Baseball Champions League, in Mexico. ©rida, Mexico.
The international baseball activity did not end there, because in October the Cuba team once again celebrated a title after almost eight years in the Caribbean Cup in Puerto Rico, although the excitement did not last long with the notorious failure in the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chili.
After a very busy year, which ended with the regular phase of the current Elite League, 2024 shows a lighter agenda for baseball, whose main foreign event for Cuba is set in November, with the third version of the Premier 12 tournament.
Beyond that competition, the second most important organized by the WBSC, it is unknown if any other Cuban team will be present somewhere, at any other time of the year. So for now, the island’s fans will have to settle for this All-Star Series… or consolation.