MarioPitching, however, is the team’s main factor in victory.When the Ciego de Ávila team won 15 of its first 17 games in the 63 National Baseball SeriesI said that Dany Miranda’s men had gone beyond their real possibilities and that maintaining a pace like that, or similar, in the remainder of the contest was beyond a dream.
There were then no shortage of those who described me as a pessimist, and even as a “bird of bad omen.” Now, when the Tigres have just lost four of the five clashes with Guantánamo, it never ceases to surprise me that those same people who called me exaggerated in my assessment of the team’s low level, denigrate the team and even go so far as to say that “how Ciego de Ávila falls to Guaso’s weak squad.”
And there are also the “scientists” who blame this terrible step at the end of the calendar on the team’s preparation, and come to believe that these adverse results are in this final stretch.
To those who think this way, I remind you that after that fabulous start, the three-time national champions held 45 matches with only 19 wins, that is, in this intermediate segment their performance, in terms of victories, is less than 50 percent. . And nothing at the end of the calendar, since quite a few of the failures were before completing even half of the games planned for the campaign.
Those who ask, and almost demand, victories and more victories from the team forget that the team lost its regular infield almost before the middle of the championship and that, for different reasons, two hitters of the stature of Osvaldo Vázquez and Héctor Labrada were out of action. the lineup, and it is not idle to also remind them of the absence of their regular shortstop Michel Arteaga.
But it usually happens that when there is a victorious streak, few try to find an academic response to that state of grace of the athletes, but when the bad results arrive, then the scholars almost always agree that there were loading problems in the athletes. training and other assessments that claim to be methodological. For years and years I have heard this definition after a poor competitive result. The story is not new.
Something is a truth bigger than a temple: the group that represents Ciego de Ávila in this 63rd National Baseball Series is one of the most modest that the province has presented in the history of Cuban baseball, which is why my qualifier that these The guys are doing a great job by still being in the front group, with logical aspirations to still make it to the postseason.
And I make it clear: I am not saying that the Tigers’ preparation plan for this campaign does not merit an analysis to correct any errors that may have existed, but prosecuting it as the cause of the latest setbacks goes beyond the description of unfair.
A prestigious coach from Ciego de Avila, back in the late 80s, was criticized for saying that the team was not well prepared and hence ended up lagging behind in the table. The answer he gave was the greatest irony I have ever heard in baseball matters. On that occasion the renowned coach said: “(…) I already knew that there had to be something for so many triumphs in Santiago de Cuba with Pacheco, Kindelán, Pierre, Fausto and Meriño. I already knew… I just realized that it was good preparation that made so many successes possible.” The answer was something like “trust God and don’t run.”
