It all started with a meme and ended up being the seal of the Cuba team in the World Baseball Classic. The Facebook page El Pelotazo, dedicated to baseball memes, was the first to use the nickname Asere Team, which has gone viral since the Cuba team made its debut in the V World Baseball Classic.

About the origin of the name Asere Team, CubaSí spoke with the sports journalist Boris Luis Cabrera Acosta, who has followed this story very closely and refers that in a conversation, via the Internet, with members of the Cuba team about the already famous name, they told him that "It had hit a lot", which in Japan attracted a lot of attention and was liked.

The colleague explains that several Caribbean and Latin American teams have nicknames: Plátano Power, in the Dominican Republic; Rubio Team, in Puerto Rico; Arepa Power, in Venezuela... and that's how this Asere Team name appeared using a word widely used in Cuba.

The official media of the Island and the world that cover the Classic have already assumed such a name that this weekend, under the hashtag #AsereTeam, it had become a trend for Cuba on social networks.

The term "asere" may seem vulgar to some, but there is no Cuban who does not know it, and that is how it now functions as a singular point of convergence and identification around the ball. This, while exemplifying how words seem to take on a life of their own and acquire new meanings and connotations with the passage of time and circumstances.

Something similar has happened with tattoos. Decades ago, the few who wore them were viewed with hatred for associating those engravings on the skin with marginality and jail. Today, good parts of Cubans, especially the majority of young people, exhibit their tattoos without prejudice, which are now also part of their identity.

If the word "asere" has not always been well received for associating it with vulgarity, today there must be few Cubans who do not feel identified with a #AsereTeam Up!

Moreover, the excitement will be greater when, this Wednesday, Armando Johnson's troops play the crucial match that will decide who travels to the city of Miami for the semifinal stage. Then it will be known if the Cuba team, and its unique name of Asere Team, will or will not have a place in the memory of Cubans and in the history of baseball.