CAMAGÜEY.- The press announces that the Bulls of the Plain are going to a national baseball final 29 years after the last time, and thus, it looks like a Gardel tango.

One night, while living one of the most exciting experiences of my career, I looked at all corners of a completed full Cándido González stadium and I repeated to myself: this has never happened.

And it is that this phenomenon of Toromanía (Toro´s mania) has ages that confirm it. Reviewing the file I only found the face of Felipe Sarduy in the photos of that Camagüey´s team that he directed in 1991 until the discussion of the title against Henequeneros.

Seven years after that result, Yariel Rodríguez was born, the peasant of San Serapio who sealed the sweep before Industriales. Neither Yosimar Cousín, Luis González, Loidel Chapellí Zulueta, Leonel Segura, nor 70% of the baseball players in the current set had born at that time.

At that point Mirna Stephens probably did not spend a day without scolding her son Leslie for spending hours hitting a ball with a stick and Marino Luis dreamed of playing with the greats in his dear Céspedes. Miguel Borroto was preparing for the triumphant return that a really strong Santiago´s team stole from him and Fernando, the interpreter of the mascot, only thought about the arrival of the San Juan to go out to dance in the troupe.

All that I meditated last night in my chair in the press box. Behind me, Miguelito, perhaps the biggest fan of the Bulls; he did live that party, but almost all of the club members of Camagüey Team, who were on my left, have only heard anecdotes of what happened then.

Several friends sent me messages throughout the crash of the blue sweep. Pocholo, Naranjo and the boys in the neighborhood were now watching behind the mesh, but none was in the colossus of Avenida 26 de Julio in 1991; the parents of Grand Master Carlos Daniel Albornoz, who enjoyed every play from the right-hand garden, perhaps they were not boyfriends; and not even the oracle of Delphi could predict that Alejo, our photographer, an Havana industrialist, would end up capturing everything with a treacherous smile on his mouth.

Neither ten nor 20, were 29 difficult and good years for those of us who were born with pride in this province, the last ones with few joys about baseball diamond. A whole generation for which the glory of the ball never existed, people who looked astonished how teams without history like Ciego de Ávila, Las Tunas and Granma played it. And they celebrated the successes of others with the anxiety of those who do not taste their own.

After the lightning fielding of Ayala that increased the volume to this land from Céspedes to the Jobabo River and woke up Ciego de Ávila´s and La Tunas´ inhabitants, I fell into an incredible account: in 1991 I learned to walk, in 1995 I started the elementary school and in 1998 a young Physical Education teacher named Alexander Infante, the same one who formed Yariel Rodríguez and who in the early morning enjoyed the triumph of the team that bears his mark, taught me to throw the ball farther. Only then I understood that it is not about the return to a final; with permission of history, it is, in age, the first time of our Bulls.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez

Photo: Leandro Pérez Pérez / Adelante

Photos: Alejandro Rodríguez Leiva / Adelante