On rare occasions a Cuban baseball star has been as respected as the Industriales´ former outfielder Javier Mendez, who earned the privilege of being considered "a gentleman inside and outside the field", which we could verify during a visit I did to his home in the municipality of Playa, Havana, a few days ago. We talked for over an hour and Javier (who claims not having a good memory and finished responding to us in detail each question) was so prepared for our pitches, as he was when hitting each of his 2101 hits in Cuban National Baseball Series. You were an idol in Havana, but what did Industriales mean to you?  That's the team I admired as a child, but I started playing with Metropolitanos my first four years, until in 1986 I went to play for Industriales. When you're facing Industriales, and that happened to me, you try to play at 200% of your chances, because despite the love you feel for them, you want to prove you deserve being part of them and giving the best of you is the best proof. But when you're already in the team is like a building, where all eyes are...

The Cuban baseball is looking for options to bring it back to the present century, after most of the usual formulas demonstrate that the delay and the downgrade are plunging it into the dark waters of modernity, where living out of memories doesn’t please fans. Statistics and their use, or rather the outdated statistics and their misuse, are one of the real weaknesses in Cuba baseball in the middle of 2013. Right here, the Cuban sabermetricians come into play or as they are known, the Independent Panel for Baseball Research (GIIB). Sabermetrics is a relatively modern science, which studies and proposes on the same data provided by baseball, but in a much more complete than orthodox statistics. Today, scholars of mathematics are able to predict much more with new statistical categories, that the ancient fielding and batting average. Alejandro Aldama Gonzalez and Camilo Quintas Meneses are currently the Sabermetrics leaders in Cuba and of course those who have managed to generate and establish the Independent Panel for Baseball Research (GIIB). They, pioneers of a feat that promises to be Herculean, agreed to meet me in the lobby of their lab and talked with me, while made me doubt concepts that...