The Medios Nacionales and Holguín teams won their doubleheader today and remained undefeated in four outings in the XXII National Press Softball Tournament, which is being played this week in the province of Matanzas.
Both teams, finalists in the last edition, are fulfilling the predictions and thanks to the tools they have shown on the field they already have their tickets to the semifinals, when there are still four games left to finish the qualifying stage.
The Galacticos of the capital city gave supernocauts to the teams of Vaqueros (25-3) and Ciego de Avila (19-0), the latter by a shutout to Sergio Morlan’s account.
They hit 10 homers in the doubleheader to bring their total to a whopping 27 in just four games, a testament to the power of this team, which has won nine consecutive crowns.
Yasiel Cancio hit four, José Méndez two and one apiece for Dayron Valdés, Maikel Pérez, Guillermo Rodríguez and captain Carlos Michel Perdomo.
The Park City Brewers out-hit the Avileños 14-2 and the Vaqueros 12-1, both wins by shutouts to the account of workhorse Richard Driggs, who has won all of his team’s games.
Rafael Perez twice took the soft ball out of bounds for the winners and Lisbey Perez did it for Ciego de Avila.
Others who also arrived in Cuba’s Athens as favourites to climb the podium are the Terremotos de Camagüey, who won the bronze medal last season.
The Agramontinos, who won both their games on the opening day, split honours on Tuesday, defeating the Yumurinos Matanceros 17-2 in the fast track and surprisingly falling 9-10 to the Piratas de La Isla, a team that swept both their games and got into the fight for the qualification spots.
The victory went to Raúl del Pino, thanks to a run of 16 hits, with Félix Anazco, who hit a single and a double, and brought four teammates to the plate.
In the loss, José Poll hit an infield homer, Gabriel Peña lost, and the hit went to Alexander Labrada.
After the day’s results, behind Medios Nacionales and Holguín (4-0), is Camagüey (3-1), followed by La Isla (2-2), Vaqueros, Ciego de Ávila and Matanzas (1-3) and Santiago de Cuba (0-4).
