Baseball play-offs join the World Sports Festival
In the midst of the world soccer tidal wave with the Euro Cup at one end and the America’s Cup at the other, the Cuban baseball playoffs begin this Thursday.
The main challenge of the baseball party in a scenario of high sports carats will be to attract the attention of the fans and manage to attract to the stands, the fans that have not been able to be seated so far.
All that is aspired to that baseball manages to impose itself as what it is: the passion of the majority in an island that, in spite of the sorrows, distills ball, much more when the postseason arrives and the emotions are triggered, the presential ones in each stadium protagonist, in the corners and the parks, in the social networks, in the houses.
It has always happened, even when, as now, the stadiums have remained half-empty, most of the time due to the absence of attractions in the game and others due to a scenario that forced once again to play under the punishment of the sun as the only option left by the blackouts throughout the calendar in the dilemma of lighting the stadiums with dark cities.
The truth is that against all odds it was possible to play to reach this moment, which in dramaturgical terms, is the climax of the Series, when the best teams that shone in the regular phase face each other and must now play fierce duels.
Fortunately for the locals, the Gallos managed to sneak into the top eight to cause the Huelga to join the national party, which comes in handy when there is not much to look at when it comes to massive recreation.
That turns Sancti Spiritus into a hotbed of passions, fueled by the magic of controversy, controversy and forecasts, ingredients that color the greatest socio-cultural spectacle of the island, which these days, and despite soccer, widens its borders because for very few Cubans living outside the country this national contagion goes unnoticed.
When this afternoon Captain San Luis opens its doors to the sub-series between Gallos and Vegueros that starts the post-season, the thermometers will begin to measure the degrees of the baseball temperature that usually goes beyond the limits of the instrument.
For many it is like facing a tsunami because of the almost invincible pace of the Pinar del Río team during the regular phase and because the particular history favors them.
In fact, the two rivals of the day arrived on different paths. The green-footed players strolled the championship and got the first ticket almost without breaking a sweat thanks to an indomitable battery, above all.
