by Riccardo Schiroli
With one week end left in the regular season, the Italian Baseball League has already picked 3 out of 4 teamns that will play in the semi final round robin (each team plays a 3 game series against the other 3 and the top 2 advance to the best of 7 Italian Baseball Series ) starting August 4.
Despite losing their starting center fielder Leo Zileri for the season, Cariparma is leading with 27 wins and is very likely going to be in first place (this means 6 out of 9 games of the round robin at home), since they face De Angelis Godo next week end.
T&A San Marino follows with one more loss after being outscored by Montepaschi Grosseto in the rubber match this weekend. The heavy loss confirms San Marino is not really comfortable when ASI (of the Italian School of Baseball) pitchers make the mound.
UGF Bologna has 25 wins but leads (4-2) the series against Nettuno this year and in case of a fourth place tie they move on to the post season. Nettuno is the only team that could end up being tied with Bologna at the end of the regular season, since UGF plays a 3 game series with Rimini.
Telemarket Rimini lost game 3 of the series against the Catania Warriors and now needs to win 2 (they are 24-15) against Bologna next week to avoid that Danesi Nettuno (22-17) ties them in 4th place with a sweep against San Marino. In case of a tie, Nettuno is 4-2 against Rimini this season and would move on to the post season.
Nettuno fors sure regrets now about not having played as hard as they could in the June 29th game against Parma. At that point, they probably believed they had no chance left. But at this point, they would be just one game below Rimini. After losing suller Lino Connell (who has been suspended by FIBS judge for 13 months, after throwing a bat at an umpire; the player from Venezuela defends himself stating that hitting the umpire was not his will, but that he simply dropped the bat), Nettuno decided to suspend theirselves right hander Carlo Richetti, who forced manager Faraone to pull him out of the game against Bologna when his pitch count got close to 100. At the time Richetti left, Nettuno was leading 4-1 but the bullpen blew the save opportunity and Nettuno lost the game 7-4.
{mrb-standing:italy-2010}
{mrb-schedule:2010-07-08|2010-07-10|IT}