The feat of Villa Clara in recovering its pending matches leaves many questions.

Cuban baseball, that sensitive fabric of our identity, is experiencing a close to the regular season with a taste much more bitter than defeat itself. What has occurred recently in the recovery of suspended games is not just an organisational anecdote; it is, lamentably, a symptom of the lack of rigour and respect that is suffocating our National Series.

Our principal sporting spectacle is agonising amidst controversies that have little to do with the roar of the stands or the talent on the diamond. What should be an epic finale has transformed into a poorly written script, where the competitive structure has ended up devouring the very essence of the game: fairness.

This is not an attack against the Villa Clara Leopards. The orange team has done what any contender must do: take advantage of circumstances and win games to advance.

The real problem does not reside in the players’ effort, but in an organisational system that has allowed a dangerous distortion of sporting reality.

It is unsustainable for the credibility of any serious championship for a team to define its destiny by disputing nine pending matches once the rest of the competitors have already put away their gloves. This «artificial extension» of the calendar has created a tainted competitive bubble. While Villa Clara played with a knife between its teeth, its rivals – already qualified like Las Tunas, or eliminated like Granma and Camagüey – took to the field without the tension, training or roster necessary to offer legitimate resistance.

Competition is only real when both sides have something to lose or gain. Facing selections that are already «on holiday mode», without their principal figures and with several days of inactivity, is not competing; in practice it becomes an administrative procedure disguised as a ball game. This situation is a slap in the face of sporting justice, especially for teams like Pinar del Río and many others who had to sweat for every victory during the regular calendar, facing rivals in full condition and motivation.

The breaking point occurred in the recent duel between Camagüey and Villa Clara. What was experienced in that ninth inning was a caricature of the national sport. To see position players on the mound, giving away walks and hitting batters, as if it were a pick-up game, until delivering the definitive lead, is an image that wounds the dignity of a spectacle, a Cultural Heritage of the Nation. That cluster of six runs for the Leopards was not a heroic comeback, but the outcome of a foretold surrender that no fan deserves to witness.

The attitude of the Camagüey team merits analysis from the highest spheres of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation. It is difficult to process that a first-category selection travels for a decisive sub-series with barely 13 position players and four pitchers. The offered justifications – ill athletes, training debts or personal problems – crumble before simple arithmetic: if a roster consists of 40 ballplayers, where were the other 23?

Also deserving criticism is the description of the match over the radio waves. The commentators of the moment were incapable of issuing a negative opinion regarding the embarrassing outcome of the match. Beyond partisan passions, objectivity must not be lost.

The National Baseball Commission, the principal culprit of this situation, cannot continue looking the other way at these fissures. Planning must be sacred, as allowing disorder to generate these deferred advantages only serves to feed the public’s distrust and devalue the prestige of our greatest cultural passion.

Cuban ball needs vibrant finales due to its quality, not due to the chaos of its regulations. If we allow improvisation to dictate who qualifies and who does not, we will be sending a devastating message: it matters more to know how to manage the calendar than to know how to manage the bat.

If we want the National Series to recover its shine, we cannot allow pending games to become «gifts» or administrative procedures lacking professionalism. Respect for the field is respect for the people and that, for now, was left off the roster.