Baseball is Frederich Cepeda's eternal girlfriend

He played third base and caught them all, when he was only 14 years old; but before that, when he was less than five years old, his father took him to the Máximo Gómez field, so that baseball would make him a faithful love story.

That union is already 40 years old, only ten years away from its golden wedding anniversary, because baseball is Frederich Cepeda's eternal girlfriend.

Pablo Francisco is the sentinel and goldsmith of one of the most exalted baseball works of Cuba, that of his son. He was his coach until, at the age of 11, he joined the sport school in Sancti Spíritus, the starting point of a galactic journey.

When he made his debut, in 1997, in the stalls of the Cuban seasons, he had already taught the future, in the children's categories, what he was capable of doing.

The national series found him as world youth and Pan American champion, and with an international tour that began in the Children's World Baseball Fair in Japan in 1992, and that went through the Continental for children under 14, in Brazil. By the time he reached them, he was already hitting with both hands.

To the baseball, which is his life, to his heart, which beats in every field of his island, he has just made a tribute. Cepeda is the hit man of Cuban baseball, His Majesty. Four digits, 2,503, are pronounced in less than a second, but the diligent colleague Norland Rosendo, immersed in the archives of Benigno Daquinta's accuracy, reveals that between the first and the one that crowned him yesterday as king, 9,999 days passed.

You have to play a lot of baseball, sweat a lifetime under the scorching Caribbean sun; you have to train without rest, give yourself without limits, in true priesthood, converted into an example of tenacity, will and a sacrosanct respect for the people who go to see him bat, those who have also tucked him in as the Rooster of Cuba.

We should be grateful for living in Cepeda's time, and thank him for this display of ethical values, discipline and love for what he does, with which the 9,999 days translate into a hit every four days, on average.

It is necessary to revere Pablo Francisco and Caridad Gladys; Damarys, mother of his son, Frederich Junior, because they have batted like him, in their long periods of a present absence; because in his wood and in each swing they are also record-holders.

He is a Cuban from cap to spikes. He has told us that his favorite food is Creole; what he hates most is betrayal; his idols are Lourdes Gurriel and Omar Linares, and that the most difficult pitchers he has faced are Pedro Luis Lazo and Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Yesterday, in front of César García, from Granma, he was the King of the jit, and the left-hander Ariel Tápanes, to whom he gave the first one, came to his mind.

A supporter of all Cuban baseball players, no matter where they play, to defend the Cuban jersey, he leaves with his record the best news, just five days before his 45th birthday next Tuesday: "I have not thought about retirement, I will continue in the field."