by Riccardo Schiroli
The Italian Baseball Series are heading to the end. The weekend will express the Champions of Italy 2008.
T&A San Marino enters games six with a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series, but also with the awareness that very likely there will be a game seven. Danesi Nettuno will start Carlo Richetti three days rest. The Dominican born right-hander qualifies as a player of the Italian School of Baseball (ASI) and this gives Nettuno a huge advantage. San Marino has only a chance: sending Matteo Tonellato (who has been out of the rotation since August 13th) to the mound. And in the semi-final round robin Tonellato pitched an overall 2.1 innings in two games.
If we will have a game seven, it will be an interesting one. Both teams rested their staff ace for the rubber match of the series. So Nettuno will count on a fresh Nelson Cruz and San Marino will count on a rested Horacio Estrada.
Nettuno and San Marino looked very much on the same level during the series. Both teams have played intense baseball, with San Marino topping levels of excellence with their defense and Nettuno capable of posting a couple of comebacks that are evidence of how much the legendary “heart of Nettuno players” is for real and not for fairy tales.
Injuries are a factor in this series. Nettuno plays without their starting second baseman Renato Imperiali and with his replacement Ramon Tavarez struggling with muscular problems. San Marino lost the starting catcher Simone Albanese and cleanup hitter Max De Biase is playing on a pulled muscle.
So far it’s been the series of many different players, but I would like to emphasize the way a couple of them are playing.
San Marino’s first baseman Dean Rovinelli has had three hits in five games, but all of them were home runs, the last one on Wednesday night a monster shot over the right field wall. His teammate Seth La Fera has started all of the games of the series at shortstop and has closed a couple of them on the mound. These are stories that belong to baseball’s best.
Game six (Friday night at 9 pm CET) and game seven (Saturday night at 9 pm CET) will be telecasted live by Rai Sport Più (available on satellite in all of Europe) but only in the second half of the matches. The website of the National Television of the Republic of San Marino (www.sanmarinortv.sm) will webcast the games entirely.
Rai Sport Più will telecast re-runs of the two games on Saturday at 11 am CET and on Monday at 6.30 pm CET
