"For us, this is a new opportunity to be converse," Party First Secretary and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, stated, welcoming Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball Confederation and Softball (WBSC).
Díaz-Canel thanked the visitor for "the support you have given our country in a number of programs, projects to strengthen the development of these sports," and emphasized the scope of a memorandum protecting Cuban athletes contracted abroad, which was signed May 4 by officials from the WBSC and the Cuban Baseball Federation.
As Fraccari explained at a press conference, the text, in addition to promoting the development of baseball in Cuba, includes the possibility of creating academies and, above all, enlists the Confederation’s support in the hiring of Cuban baseball players in professional leagues.
During the meeting with Fraccari, Diaz-Canel denounced the perverse intentions of the U.S. government which has created obstacles to hinder the development of a sport that is at the center of Cuban identity, and enthusiastically welcomed the idea of an international academy on the island.
Accustomed to “talking straight,” Fraccari stated that “Cuban baseball, which for me is historic, must recuperate the brilliance it deserves and can have. So what we did this morning (the signing of the memorandum of understanding) is historic."
Diaz-Canel was accompanied by Party Secretariat member Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo, head of its Department of Attention to the Social Sector, Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo Di-Lella; the President of Cuba’s Olympic Committee, Roberto León Richards; as well as the vice president of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation, Ariel Sainz Rodríguez, and Cuban Baseball Federation commissioner, Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo.
Also present were visitors Víctor Isola, Marco Lenna, and Rafael Llamas.
