The old baseball

After four weeks of rest, Cuban baseball is back. The 63rd National Series will begin next Saturday in eight baseball parks, and the month of July will probably not be enough to see the champion lift the cup. When this time of year comes, I always remember the days when I waited for the newspaper every morning to read it with my maternal grandmother.

At the end of the nineties, the National Series opened in winter. Waiting for the game between the champion and runner-up from the previous campaign always generated high expectations. The only exception at that time was the 41st National Series, which began on January 6, 2002, with a confrontation between Santiago de Cuba and Industriales at the Guillermón Moncada stadium.

Almost always, at the beginning of the week, the team rosters were published in the newspaper. That was a unique moment for teenage fans like me, because we had the opportunity to collect the rosters. I don't know if you did it too. I had two notebooks: one was to paste newspaper clippings or entire pages with information. But then, afterwards, I also made written lists to memorize some details such as the players' numbers, the nicknames they had and their most significant statistics.

This is a newspaper clipping from 1997, with the rosters of the teams in the western zone.

The most exciting thing about that passion is that I still have some notebooks, score sheets from later years, and notes about the games. When I look through all those little treasures, I always remember my maternal grandmother. “Mima” she bought me the markers so that I could write down each team with its traditional color. We looked for glue, and then put the finishing touches on our little equipment guide.

As I said before, more than two decades have passed, but I still remember with devotion all those years in which my passion for baseball began to be forged. Since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about what I call “Baseball before.”

I feel a little nostalgic, and maybe you will too when you remember the baseball of your time. For me, it will be the second Opening Day without hearing my grandmother asking me which teams had won. I know that nothing will be like before, so I have taken each start of the season as if everything was starting again.