TO ALL Baseball Stakeholders: athletes, teachers, coaches, parents, officials, Philippine Amateur Baseball Association, Philippine Sports Commission, Philippine Olympic Committee, Senate Committee on Youth and Sports, President Aquino, Anyone. (Attention: Baseball Federation of Asia, World Baseball and Softball Confederation),
I take full responsibility and freedom in writing this letter defying protocols, channels of communication and authorities just to make sure I have done my best share in insisting that our National Baseball Team must participate in the Asia Cup 2015 because they meritoriously earned it.
1. Against all odds, our National Baseball Team went to Indonesia last April 2015, participated in the East Asia Cup and won all its games, including the most assertive blanking of Indonesia in the finals, 10-0. The team, as usual, needed longer time to prepare, more modern training equipment/facilities and better pool of players to choose from and yet we already prevailed against the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia by sweeping the whole tournament. And so we earned the right to represent East Asia in the Asia Cup come September 2015 in Taiwan.
2. Being in the Asia Cup as a team or athletes is like being in the Olympics or World Baseball Classic already because the no. 1 baseball country in the world, Japan, is there. Before Paba (Philippine Amateur Baseball Association) decided to relinquish this honor to Indonesia it should have thought a million times before doing so because the Philippines can always produce the money and resources needed to send our winning team there but it can never buy that victory, ever! No amount of reasoning can satisfy me nor any member of the team nor any Filipino because in principle our country is being robbed of this “once in a lifetime opportunity,” especially our national team which happens to include my son Adriane Ros R. Bernardo, whom I’ve seen sacrificed a lot to help the team win.
3. At this point i would like to appeal to all concerned especially to the World Baseball and Softball Confederation to overrule all previous decisions and actions of anyone and facilitate the sending of our national baseball team to Taiwan this September for the Asia Cup, a slot we rightfully deserve. I have indicated in my previous letters to you that your standard of excellence or performance in this particular tournament goes down significantly because you are allowing our country to miss this tournament. Please reconsider your decision and action and pave the way for our national baseball team to cross bats with the best of Asia in this prestigious Asia Cup. Dig into your sense of justice please. The party who communicated to you of the decision that our national baseball team will not participate in the Asia Cup acted based on his own will and maybe had his own reason/s for doing so but he surely did not represent the national interest then and even the interest of your organization to have just the best teams participate in the Asia Cup.
4. I appeal then to all baseball-loving Filipinos and all in proper authority to exert similar efforts to pave the way for the inclusion of our national baseball team in the Asia Cup. You may write, call or even visit Baseball Federation of Asia at 886-2-27473368, address at 9F.-3, no. 288, Sec. 6 Civic Blvd., Xinyi Dist., Taipei City n110, Taiwan (ROC), e-mail bfa@baseballasia.org. Please!
5. Last but not the least, just like any game or any race, it ain’t over till it’s over, any race is always won at the finish line, let us pray together for justice to reign in Philippine baseball by initially “getting on first base” our national baseball team to Asia Cup 2015.
Thank you.
Yours in baseball excellence,
Coach Roselito M. Bernardo
E-mail: bmbernardo@southridge.ph.