Amid deafening cheers at the Sports City Coliseum in Havana as he awaits the arrival of the Cuban national team, an 18-year-old student from Dominica looks around in confusion: “I don’t like baseball, but I think it’s important because they brought my whole class.”

Just yesterday, the Caribbean lost to the USA in the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic by a resounding 14-2 score. But the atmosphere is festive.

After landing, the players traveled through the main streets of the capital by bus. They were also received by President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

“Cuba has joined and we will continue to dream of bringing our sport back to the top of world baseball,” he said.

Despite the defeat, the West Indies team managed to finish in the top four of the tournament for the first time in 17 years. That is why the host keeps repeating that the Cubans are, in fact, “champions”.

This is also what the young people in this place believe, although others who join in the applause for the inertia of the environment.

“I came with my school,” 18-year-old María de la Caridad López, who has a Cuban flag painted on her left cheek, told EFE.

More than 20 buses lined up near the venue a few meters from the entrance. The first students to arrive – from young children in uniform to university students – were there before nine in the morning, and the clock was already striking eleven without players.

15-year-old Luis Ernesto is one of the most excited to be where the team ends its tour of the capital. He, too, aspires to be a baseball player and boasts that his batting average is “above 300,” which is considered a high average in baseball.

“The defeat was a shame. But nothing is happening, we have already exceeded expectations,” he says of the national team, which for the first time in history played against players competing in the Major League Baseball (MLB).

calls for voting

A few meters away, in line for the bathroom, 18-year-old Adriana Fonseca and 21-year-old Julio Cesar talk about an ongoing dispute. The young people refer to the anti-government protests that took place at LoanDepot Stadium in Miami, where the match was held.

Although they were mostly peaceful, there were moments of violence, such as when a Cuban pitcher threw a ball to a protester who reprimanded him, or an attack on relatives of Caribbean players that a baseball player condemned.

“You shouldn’t mix politics with sports, but we are all free in conscience,” complains Julio Cesar.

Fonseca adds: “It was done badly. It was neither the time nor the place.”

And suddenly the Colosseum explodes: players enter one by one with wide smiles. Not all of them, pitcher Ivan Prieto defected before returning to Havana, and foreign league players were also absent.

At the same time, the discourse also becomes political.

The presenter does not miss the opportunity to talk about the Sunday demonstrations. He emphasized that there was a “minority that wanted to tarnish the show” and that “that is why we will all go to the polls”. We are talking about parliamentary elections on March 26.

He is not the only one calling for a vote. With a microphone in hand and his team at his side, Osvaldo Vento, president of the National Institute for Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), is raising his voice and blaming dissent in Florida.

“Haters of Miami showed their true colors, and we showed that “better is possible” (the government’s slogan to motivate the vote). See you on March 26 (date of general elections) at the polling stations!

The stands received the speech, but the applause was tepid compared to what Alfredo Despaigne, the team’s captain and the tournament’s all-time home run leader, mustered moments earlier: “It was a very difficult scenario (the one in Miami), but we will take revenge for another Clasico.”