The economy will be the worst enemy of an ambitious baseball project

By SwingCompleto / contacto@swingcompleto.com

The Ciudad Deportiva has been the largest baseball epicenter in Cuba for decades from the amount of regular and improvised fields that have served to match leagues or “pitenes” at the same time like no other place on the island. Even the National Series itself and international events sponsored by the highest world body have found space in the well-known “Santiago Changa Mederos” stadium.

The degradation of some lands, as well as the little interest shown, together with the lack of implements first and then the situation with the pandemic, considerably reduced the activity of this gigantic place located in the heart of the Cerro municipality and Havana, surrounded through the busy streets of Vía Blanca, Boyeros, Santa Catalina and Primelles.

All that could change in the medium-term future with an idea that seems positive for the development of baseball, as good as it is ambitious, and therein lies its biggest problem. And it is that in a Cuba with so many economic problems, thinking about a project like the “National Baseball School” with all the laws makes it a long way from theory to reality.

This old dream of many now has in the well-known and no less controversial oriental technician Franger Reinaldo to its main driving motor. According to close references to the award-winning manager in the Cuban and Panamanian leagues, he has designed a written project with everything necessary to develop it. We are not talking about money, but about the profits of each area together with the way to implement the mechanism.

Within the INDER there has been a good acceptance of what is made up by Franger within a Sports City with the most favorable conditions to materialize something that so many people have demanded for decades.

Location, infrastructure and tradition are the three main aspects, together with the proximity to the National Sports Directorate and even the headquarters of the Baseball Commission and its Federation, which is the same as saying the main stadium in Cuba, the Latin American. It also has other places there that would have a direct relationship with this center, such as the University of Sports and the Sports Industry.

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The objective is to recondition all the land and improve its conditions, in addition to creating new areas that allow other related activities, as well as better comfort and options for those who are connected to the school in one way or another.

It is valid to clarify that the area where the soccer fields are located would not only continue to provide service, but would also be improved to strengthen the work in the minor categories of this discipline.

We do not pretend to be pessimistic and with them throw our hopes to the trash, but as we pointed out from the headline, an idea like that requires a budget that today’s Cuba needs to use in other things that are more important, even in social life more than sporty. Of course, we are talking about complying with the project from end to end, since the other would be to reduce a percentage of claims to the same one that can undeniably ruin many things.

Although there is a saying that says that in life before walking you must first crawl, that everything is little by little, there is also another very real one: “things are done well or they are not done”. And in Cuba there are plenty of examples of works that have failed to be carried out by renouncing certain needs.

Perhaps the budget assigned to INDER by the Cuban regime and from which the money for this Baseball School would come, has nothing to do with what is needed to buy the basic products of the population. In the particular way that internal finances, the national currency and the so-called MLC are handled, anything is possible.

We only have to wait then, when not when it comes to initiatives in such a problematic Cuba, but to do so with our feet on the ground that no one can be surprised if in a while we have to write a note saying that there was no money for That, that was only approved to make a certain percentage, or that like so many things there (the Sports Museum for example) that part of the budget went another way. Hopefully we are wrong and both Franger and those who accompany him in this endeavor materialize without major setbacks something that is real will not save Cuban baseball from many of its main difficulties, but at least it will try to improve others that today have reached so low that they already visualize the bottom of the sea.