150 years of the first ball game in Cuba are commemorated

The official sport of Cuba is celebrated by commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first official ball game on the island.

As part of the celebrations that will take place on Saturday, February 22 at 10:00, local time, a friendly match will be held between the Matanzas and Havana teams. The campuses will be led by Lázaro Junco and Lázaro de la Torre, respectively.

The clash is expected to take place at the Palmar de Junco stadium in the city of Matanzas, a diamond in which the first official baseball game in the largest of the Antilles took place.

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Matanzas picture

On the part of the Yumurinos, they will have on their payroll with glories of national sport such as former -gardeers Rigoberto Rosique, Wilfredo and Fernández Sánchez and former Lanzadores Gaspar Pérez and Alfredo García. All of them have integrated at some point the Cuba team and have named the island high.

As if that were not enough, the former receptors Juan Manrique, Evelio Hernández, Barbaro Rosales and Luis Ferrales, the Wilfredo Menéndez, Vaisel Acosta, Marcos Walters and the Table Players Julio Germán Fernández, Arturo Sánchez, Alberto Díaz, Eduardo, Eduardo Cárdenas, Andrés Pérez and Leonardo Goire.

Lázaro Garro, Jonder Martínez, Roberto Álvarez, Eduardo Terry, Tomás Valido, Barbaro Rogelio Amores, Rafael Delgado, Guillermo Tortoló, Jesús Torriente, Luis Fernández and Ignacio Roca, will parade.

Havana Selection

As for the Habanera national team, it will be directed by Pedro Medina, Rodolfo Puente, Antonio Acea, Heriberto Corbea, José Elosegui, Ismael Triay and Julián Sarría.

To delight fans of this sport, you can see Frank Camilo Morejón, Antonio Scull, Joyce Sú, Ernesto Sánchez, Yoandry Urgellés, IraqiLy Chirino, Leonardo Castrezana, Ernesto Morilla, José Antonio Soto, Miguel Ángel Yanes and Andrés Moya .

Those in charge of throwing the balls will be Lázaro de la Torre, Wilber Pérez, Frank Javier Menéndez, René Espín, Jorge Fumero and Jorge Valdés.

Interest article: Little champions: a legendary adventure series on Cuban television

A little history

It is believed that baseball (Ball) could be introduced in Cuba by the young Nemesio Guilló, who studied in the United States, a country where this sport was already widely known.

According to several scholars, when returning to the island in 1864, Guilló brought with him the first bat and the first ball. Together with his brother Ernesto and his friend Enrique Porto, he introduced the main technical aspects of what, over time, would become national sport.

It should be noted that, at that time, Cuba was a colony of Spain, who did not see with good eyes the presence of the new sport. So very soon baseball also served for the conspiracy meetings of the Cubans against the metropolis.

For 1868 Guilló, along with his brother Ernesto and a group of friends who included Enrique Canal, Francisco and Rafael Saavedra, Ricardo Mora, Alfredo Maruri and Leopoldo de Sola, founded the “Havana Base Ball Club” (Havana BBC), becoming like this in the first official team of the island.

Over the years, Baseball would become the passion of Cubans. Encounters between teams such as Industriales and Santiago de Cuba are able to divide the country in two and their fans travel from one end to the other of the island to see their selection.

Some of the greatest stars of this sport are Cubans, who play by Major Leagues such as the Yankees or the Red Boston socks.