“What really bothers those who put on the show in Miami against our team at the V World Baseball Classic are the new winds that blow from Cuba and its Revolution for reconciliation among all Cubans,” Ricardo Ronquillo said Thursday. national president of UPEC, in a meeting with sports executives, coaches and the sector’s press to discuss the issue.
At the UPEC headquarters, Ronquillo commented that the country’s position goes against the hate machine that tries to pit Cubans against each other and explained the importance of always prevailing – as happened in the Classic – the most beautiful of the national soul.
“This has not ended here; it has to do with the challenges that Cuba faces, hence the need for us to meditate on the nation’s historical dispute,” said the UPEC president.
Before, Raúl Fornés, first vice president of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), had introduced elements of the siege that tried to prevent or obscure the fact that for the first time players from other leagues did not play on the same team. hired by our Federation with those who animate the National Series in Cuba.
“The haters did everything to prevent those who play in Major League Baseball (MLB) from playing with Cuba, and several quality players declined to participate, given the pressure received from the United States, especially from Miami,” Fornés said. who also referred to the three central objectives of INDER for the event.
“We made it clear that we would go play baseball and that the most important thing was to defend the homeland in its four letters, regardless of the political criteria of any player; This is how a family climate was created, which still works well. In addition, we would fight for a satisfactory sporting result and to defend the uniform at whatever price was necessary”, added the first vice president of INDER.
This last objective was demonstrated to the highest degree: “The 30 athletes defended the homeland; sometimes -as in Miami-, in a hostile scenario that included pressure before the game, verbal and physical attacks and public threats to them and their families”.
Fornés recounted the logical contradictions seen in Miami, since many people and players from other countries did not understand how the team that represents their nation of origin can be attacked.
However, the sports director recognized how the MLB responded to the Cuban alerts, although in the end the complicity of the mayor of Miami annulled the prevention measures conceived by the Majors and opened the door to nonsense and violence.
The accredited Cuban press did not escape such a siege of incivility. My colleague Oscar Sánchez, from the newspaper Granmahighlighted the challenging nature that the V Clásico had for the reporting exercise.
“We were in right field and from there we saw the attacks on our pitchers Frank Abel Álvarez and Liván Moinelo, who were warming up in the bullpen. Actually, we should have formed a great press team to face what we are experiencing in Miami in better conditions; we had a good one, but I’m talking about wearing a more robust one, because we were facing a media army against our team”, said Oscar.
“We had – he added – to have gone ahead and foresee that this was the most difficult tournament for Cuba, and that it was a national sport tournament, the one that is cultural heritage and in which the Cuba-States dispute is most visibly verified on a field Joined”.
Also Joel García, from the newspaper workers, regretted that the Cuban press team at the V Clásico was reduced “to the minimum expression” when, in addition to making their reports on the event, the communicators can greatly help the team’s management in managing its media projection. “The press cannot be seen as one more in the group,” Joel considered before exposing the anti-Cuban media traffic that turned the so-called Team Asere into the “Communist Team”, with the intention of attacking him.
In the worst of Florida, the ins and outs of sports were contaminated with politicians. The reporter of Radio Rebel Pedro Rafael Cruz considers that Cuba’s victory against Australia unleashed the panic that they could beat the United States, with what that would mean there, before which the nonsense of trying to ban the game was used on the grounds that the The stadium is from Miami -the same one that the mayor used to open the fence to hatred- and, therefore, it could be achieved.
For the veteran reporter, the essential thing is that, after the Classic, in Cuba children are once again playing ball in the parks, with gloves and everything! “We have to work for the ball!” Pedro Rafael summoned.
In the semifinal game in Miami, the Cuban radio and television journalists had to broadcast in an open space, in the stands themselves, at a short distance and without any protection against elements hostile to them and to the nation they represented. His behavior was endorsed by Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo, president of the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation, who recognized that throughout the Classic process, journalists offered useful ideas.
The young reporter Radio Rebel Guillermo Rodríguez Hidalgo-Gato, one of those who participated in the coverage, commented on the pride he feels for the entire delegation, highlighted the equanimity of the director Armando Johnson and also that of the journalists, who even under siege knew that they could not lose their composure .
Those attending the colloquium at UPEC appreciated, as the first public, the documentary A classic for historyfrom the reporters of Tele Rebelde Aurelio Prieto Alemán and René Duarte, an on-board logbook of this ship of heroism, but Cuba journalists What Germán Mesa said seems to him the best closing of this note.
A while after a phrase from a reporter aroused a certain murmur in the room, another colleague directly asked the star shortstop from Industriales and from the Cuba team if he really believed that we could beat that team from the United States .
“Yes we could beat him! Why not?”, the magician caught the question, as if it were a ball, and threw it into his prodigy hat, but little by little, dissatisfied, he said more: “If you let me know we’re playing tomorrow, I’ll tell you: We can beat him.” That was how Germán began the great out of the afternoon, the one with the very Cuban spirit of the Clásico. To receive his impeccable lance, the maestro had a journalist on the other side who, for Cuba, if necessary, dresses as Juan Padilla.