Perhaps no sports expression can transmit the sound of our people, their feelings, or their colors. Perhaps there is no other more faithful way to show our hopes or the popular imaginary that embraces us, through a peaceful emulation in the competitive scenario, than Baseball5.
Cuba has once again become world champion, in the match held in Hong Kong. With electrifying defensive plays, with an offense that, out of their hands, knocked down as many trees as the forests they challenged had; and with fast legs that devoured their bases, the girls and boys carried the cultural heritage of their small nation throughout the world geography.
Who in this baseball Island did not hit the ball, in their block, using the perfect square of the street corners. Thus we emulated the great gods of the diamond, and as children we believed we were already champions.
"For the second time Cuba is world Baseball5 champion. The boys of the four corners reached the final undefeated and in the decisive game they defeated Japan. Congratulations champions. Thank you for passionately defending a sport born in the marrow of the Homeland: our neighborhoods."
So said a Cuban who did not miss the emotions of the four corners; so said the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, when he congratulated the team that was once again directed, with wisdom and certainty, by Pablo Terry.
From the 7th until last Saturday, we saw in the Baseball5 players the beauty of our roots, which made this discipline germinate for the world. The dawn, to give it to us as a sport, already included in the Youth Olympic Games, is the fruit of that intelligence that inhabits Cubans, of their resilience, but also of their creativity to transform the community into a stadium, in which many games take place, to challenge the quartet that keeps winning.
It is of healthy pride that today the World Baseball and Softball Confederation, in the internationalization and growth of its sports, has vertiginously developed Baseball5, and even more so that its own President, Ricardo Fraccari, when exposing the new competitive modality, in November 2017, expressed.
"We saw in Havana, in one of our trips, what you know as Four Corners, and we took it on, with slight variations, and we have already successfully tested it in places like India and countries in Africa. We have to go into countries where baseball is not a major sport. We know that many of them don't have fields, gloves or bats, but with this modality we are going to make it happen."
Then, at that very moment, on the 23rd of that month and year, he put a seal of identity on it: "We decided to present it in Cuba, because it was born here."
In less than a year, the largest of the Antilles already had national championships, entered the WBSC international calendar, and since then has won every tournament it has participated in, from regional to world championships, in the senior and youth categories.
Baseball5 looks like Cuba, and of course it is in the veins of baseball, as its greatest popular expression. It is also in the essence of a society that has not ceased in its inclusive principles and the emancipation of women. How exciting it was to see Haila González with the women's MVP (Most Valuable Player of the World Cup) trophy, the same title that Briandy Molina received for the second consecutive time; or her teammates.
