Great Baseball News

Great Baseball News
DDC | Madrid | 16 de Marzo de 2017 - 18:04 CET.

Cuba's collapse at the World Baseball Classic is great news for several
reasons.

First, because at times it is beneficial to hit rock bottom. A national
team outperformed in every aspect of the game reveals the true extent of
the debacle. The few victories in recent years had helped to sustain the
fallacy that things were not really that bad.

Second, because what happened is a clear metaphor for what is happening
in Cuba. No country can afford to squander the best of its talent and
its youth. As long as Cuban professionals cannot invest knowledge and
resources in their own country, Cuba will continue to be a nation
unlikely to be able to compete against the community of free nations and
achieve prosperity. Barring Cuban baseball players who are now playing
in the US Major Leagues from representing their country is like
preventing doctors, architects, scientists, academics and engineers from
benefitting all Cubans outside the overview of the State.

Third, because the culprits are exposed. The task of the political class
that still governs Cuba should not be to keep watch over and control the
gates of the country based on its interests and loyalties, but to open
those doors for all Cubans to freely come and go and contribute their as
best they can and wish to. True to itself, and no one else, that
political class now seeking to establish State capitalism, after
spending years spouting bombastically patriotic discourse based, among
other thing, on sports, is what is keeping the country mired in a
permanent political, social and economic crisis.

Baseball in Cuba, since its inception, has been linked to independence
and national identity. Today it continues to be, but only to portray,
like few other things, the magnitude of the disaster engendered by the
Castro regime. It was Fidel Castro who introduced the theory of the
superiority of "free ball" over "slave ball." Today we must recognize
that he was right, though acknowledging that "slave ball" is what the
regime promotes, and always has.

Source: Great Baseball News | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/deportes/1489683869_29695.html