A ring on the ground – Escambray

Faced with what he considered a poorly called strike, Alexei Ramírez stood at home plate for a few seconds. He wasn’t looking at the referee, just at the area. The ampaya Alexis Zaldívar turned his back and ended the inning at the José Antonio Huelga stadium.

It was a demonstration, more than a protest, of disagreement from the Pinar del Río, perhaps because in moments he compared the area with the one applied to him in his nine seasons in the Major Leagues. The reaction is logical and normal. The referee’s decision seemed fair, as appreciated by the local public, although nothing justifies the insults to the outstanding player for his silent complaint.

But that, that a contradiction between parties ends in peace, does not always happen in baseball stadiums, nor in Cuba, nor in other leagues. But apparently in the current National Series the controversies surrounding refereeing have gone beyond a decision and many have led to regrettable acts of indiscipline.

Recent events attest to this; Not all of them are televised, but in times of the Internet and social networks any citizen can broadcast – and in fact does – the games and with them the refereeing “errors” and the general indiscipline that involve both men and women – because also the There are players and team leaders dressed in black.

One of the most notable events was the one that occurred on the field on September 5, during the fifth game between Cienfuegos and Camagüey, when Yosvany Savón, the home plate referee, already in extra inning, sang quietly about a play that ultimately led to defeat. for southerners. The game was not televised, but the broadcast through social networks clearly shows when a good part of the losing team attacked him and others from the refereeing team, in a brawl that infected the public; and if the blood did not reach the river it was because the police forces took the referees away.

While waiting for the sanctions announced by the National Baseball Commission for the main parties involved (six players and one manager expelled on the spot and suspended for one game), the lessons remain in the pipeline, another of the many that this campaign leaves behind. arbitration actions, although it is clear that nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies indiscipline and violence.

It is striking that for something that is a visible phenomenon in stadiums, only seven warnings have been given to referees during the first 30 games of the series. And it’s not that we now take on “those who always lose”, as the eponymous documentary by Guillermo Torres called them, since it is known that these are something like the black sheep of the story or the bad boy of the movie. Their decisions must be made in fractions of seconds, pressured from all sides: by competitors, the public, experts, the press. Add lack of preparation, lack of encouragement…

The point is that the aim of rescuing the quality of baseball involves perfecting refereeing and its public image in a country where there are thousands of referees in the stands and each one has his own strike zone or his decision on this or that play.

To save myself arguments, I borrow the authoritative opinion of Luis César Valdés, who in an interview with television colleague Evyan Guerra made a spoken portrait of his colleagues: “Refereeing is not going through a good moment, in recent days there have been easy plays and we have lacked concentration, decision and we are behaving like referees who do not have quality. Refereeing has no training, you have to come from scratch and start training in the National Series. We have average refereeing and below and our referees have no way to prepare, there is no school, I have not been able to meet with them, only with those who come to Havana.”

The anecdotes described and the many visible mistakes in the matches carbon copy the expert’s words. As if the phenomenon were missing last straws, the most recent meeting of the National Commission with the sports press added another, when it addressed the incident under investigation of the series Pinar del Río vs. Matanzas in which a false name was announced by referee Ricardo Companioni, sanctioned days before for what was considered an error when deciding on a play at third.

It is known that the out or the safe one are children of appreciation, as can be a foul or a good ball. Everything gets more complicated when there is no replay; and that happens daily in seven games, since only one is televised. So so many eyes cannot be wrong, nor so much reality either.

With the crisis of credibility that this judge, who is so essential in a baseball game or any other sport, is going through, the Disciplinary Commission should not add reasons to the problem if in matches like the one described between Camagüey and Cienfuegos the referee of the controversy He is from the land of the tinajones, according to the digital version of the Cienfuegos newspaper September 5. And here we add to the lack of preparation that is not achieved in run-and-run courses and seminars, the corrosion of ethics, that which in the prelude to each campaign players, coaches and referees promise to fulfill, and then taint on the field. Beyond appreciation, can someone get rid of that sense of belonging that usually runs through their DNA when it comes to deciding for or against their own?

Ethics, translated into impartiality, is what must prevail in this specialist, who, although it is true that he must learn to count to a thousand and go overboard when some game actions try to take him out of his senses, it is also true that he has in his hands the highest mission to control—from self-control—a baseball game, which in Cuba passes through the hot Latin blood of players, coaches and public.

But, not even unfair, verbal and even obscene offenses give reasons for some referees, as has happened, to get involved with the fans and respond to them in the middle of a game when all their senses must be in the game so that they do not it gets out of hand. They are there to calm tempers, not to heat them up. This is where part of the long-awaited authority comes in, which is only earned with the respect that the expert manages to imbue from his best decisions, which does not mean that he does not make mistakes as a human being.

One fact is revealing: after the first 30 games, almost fifty players had been expelled from the games. Will there be many or few? Have the impartials been fair or unfair when making that decision? We will have to look at each case, although I am in favor of the fact that before regretting major events like the one in Cienfuegos or those that in past series ended with injuries to referees or players, excess is better than defect.

What is clear is that the stadium is not a boxing ring, much less a cock fence, although sometimes it seems the latter, when bets rain down from the stands and money is played for this or that result and the losers. They often take action against the referees when they consider that they ruined their business, regardless of whether their team won or lost.

Although he is part of it, the referee is not the center of the show and that must be a task to be resolved both in the remainder of the series, as well as in those to come or in other tournaments at any level, in order to bring back the ground the best values ​​that baseball should promote as the nation’s cultural heritage.