In these days Cuba has been a total madness. Everywhere everybody speaks about the same thing; our baseball team has arrived to finals against all the prognoses of specialists, sport reporters and experts of the matter. Even in Cuba it existed the belief that our baseball was only good for amateurs’ championships, intercontinental cups and Olympiads, but when the moment come to face true professionals, the team could not resist.

Taking in mind the outstanding stars of other teams, players that win millionaire figures every year and accustomed to long and great quality championships, our players seemed simple fans. However, a thing was on our side, and it is the spirit of fighting until the last out and the tranquility that gives to play until the last effort without having to backup a name or a deserved or not salary in the majors. Any other thing would be false to consider; nobody thought that the Cubans could arrive to such a place, neither in the Major Leagues nor inside Cuba.

Analyzing the championship as a whole, there are things that we can take as lessons:

The best baseball in the world is not monopolized by the Major Leagues. While most fans probably thought the Classic finals would feature clubs consisting of mostly Major Leaguers, only one player will fit that bill when starting lineups are announced: Japan's Ichiro Suzuki.

For us Cubans, the Classic leaves us the desire to see in our team players like Contreras, the Duke, Liván Hernández and many others. Those players are considered traitors by the Cuban government just because they leaved Cuba to play in the Major Leagues. Though they publicly said they field themselves Cubans and they proudly would like to represent their country. As you know, sport and politics are not a good pair.

Another lesson is that it is not enough to have a team full of stars and good performance players. To win it is necessary to have team spirit and it was demonstrated by Japan as much as Cuba, Puerto Rico and Korea. In that sense it was really disappointing the performance of the United States team that could not even classify for semifinals.

We can conclude that this World Classic has been a total success for baseball as a sport. They say that it will repeat every 3 years; others affirm that every 2. In any way the great lesson that this championship leaves us is the fact that the best baseball in the world is not monopolized exclusively by the Major Leagues. It is necessary to consider also the asiatics and other teams that cannot consent to play in the Majors for different causes.

As people used to say in Cuba: The ball is round but it comes in square boxes.