The first shout of ¨ Play ball¨ of the 52nd Cuban National Baseball Series will be pronounced next November 25 at the stadium José Ramón Cepero, when Ciego de Ávila and Industriales, champion and runner-up of the last series, will play the opening match.
Taking into account that our national pastime is played now in two stages, the first 8 teams will get a berth at the second one, the beginning requires a lot of concentration and an adequate use of every detail. So being visitor or home-club regains more importance as there will be only 45 games, an odd number.
In this sense, some of the classified squads in the last contest were not rewarded, and for example: the teams of Ciego de Avila, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara will play seven sub series in their stadiums and eight on the road, when it should be the other way, just as with the rest of the teams who encouraged last postseason: Industriales, Matanzas, Sancti Spiritus, Las Tunas and Granma.
Now it is ideal to play against tough rivals as host. Assessing this situation, Industriales, known as ¨ The Blues of the capital¨, has been widely benefited as they face as home–clubs, in the Latin American Stadium, their toughest opponents.
This stadium, also known as the Colossus of Cerro, will host nothing more and nothing less than the three classics of Cuban baseball, Industriales (The Blues) vs. Santiago de Cuba (The Wasps); vs. Villa Clara (The Oranges) and vs. Pinar del Rio (The Greensoxs). The team of the Cuban capital will also fight, on its headquarters, against the country’s current champion, Ciego de Avila (The Tigers), Cienfuegos (The Elephants) and Sancti Spiritus (The Roosters), as well as the weaker squads of Artemisa and Mayabeque.
The teams will play three straight days with an intermediate day of rest, which allow the teams to rest or move as required by the schedule. To ensure that there will be games on weekends, it was planned the called cut sub series, in which some squads have two straight matches, then rest, and play again to complete their confrontation, enabling fans to enjoy baseball on Saturday and Sunday.
The 16 teams will be in action on November 27 and just one month later the competition will stop to rest by the end and beginning of the year. In that day will be double header with start time at 10.00 am. After the holiday, the tournament will resume on January 4th, 2013.
This first stage of 45 games is expected to culminate on January 31st, reserving the all-star game for February 4th.
The second stage will have to wait for the arrival of Cuban national baseball team from the 3rd World Baseball Classic, and then it will start the complementary part of the championship, with the participation of only eight teams that showed the best results in the first stage.
Author
Reynier Batista Morales
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