Baseball
Ciego de Ávila appeared this Thursday on the top of the standings of the 54th Cuban Baseball Championship with Wednesday's victory against Camagüey and Industriales' 2nd defeat facing Holguín.
The Avilanians' Los Tigeres took advantage of Camagüey's mistakes in defense to win with narrow 4-3 margin, with victory for the experienced Yander Guevara and rescue for Victor Baró, while Yormani Socarrás took the loss. Luis Robert Moirán and Yorelvis Charles guided the winning offensive with 1 trailer per capita and Hector Hernandez homered for the losers.
Meanwhile, Holguin got in the way of Industriales for the 2nd consecutive night with tight 1-0 victory thanks to strong pitching from starter Carlos Santiesteban and excellent work of Yaisel Sierra, who only allowed 1 hit in 3 innings while veteran Frank Monthiet took the loss.
Now Ciego de Ávila and Industriales share the top with 6 hits and 2 setbacks, seconded by Artemisa, Matanzas, Granma and Sancti Spiritus, all with 5-3.
In other matches, Artemisa's Los Cazadores beat 5-4 to Pinar del Rio, Isla de la Juventud exceeded 8-3 to Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba won 9-5 to Mayabeque, Cienfuegos defeated 4-2 to Matanzas and Granma 3-1 to Sancti Spiritus.
And in another about baseball, we knew that Cuban slugger Alfredo Despaigne Rodriguez hit a homer and said goodbye to the Japanese Baseball League (Nippon Professional Baseball, NPB) with a 311 average and 12 homers during his 1st Season with the Chiba Lotte Marines.
In 45 games played in the NPB, Despaigne, left fielder and 4th batter of the Chiba Lotte, hit 50 hits, with 26 extra-base hits (13-01-12), drove in 33 runs, scored 26, received 16 walks, struck out 36 times and left a 627 slugging and on-base percentage of 374 (OBP), in addition to 1 homer every 13.42 at bats, very similar to that of exhibited in the Cuban classics with 13.64.
Thus, the Cuban had an impressive end of Season averaging 438 (32-14) in their last 10 games, with 10 RBIs and 4 homers. Despaigne will return to Cuba next week and in the middle of this month will join his team Granma's Los Alazanes to play the 54th National Baseball Series (SNB). Also, Yulieski Gourriel Castillo batted 4-1 and raised his average to 313 with a remaining 5 games to conclude his presence with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars.
Basketball
Cuba was out of the playoff quarter-finals of the World Basketball Championship for females to lose 79-86 to Serbia. In a clash played in Turkey, the students of Cuban coach Alberto Sabala could not afford the Europeans who were better and could not be included in the top 8 after finishing the preliminaries with only 1 win and 3 losses.
Again, Marlén Cepeda led the Cuban attack with 18 points and Oyanaisis Gelis gave 8 assistances while Ana Dabovic shone for the Serb with 21 cartons; thus ensures Serbia's presence in quarterfinal clash against Turkey, while Cuba will fight for a place from October 9th to the 12th.
The farewell to the Cuban team is joined to that of Brazil that fell 48-61 against France, which now will face the United States, while Canada, which beat Czech Republic 91-71, goes on Friday against Australia, and China, which beat 72-67 to Belarus, will rival Spain.
370 Runners From 39 Nations Registered For Marabana
The officials in charge of Marabana Project, the main marathon race in Cuba, reported today that 370 runners from 39 countries have registered formally for the competition, a record figure at this time of the year.
A report by organizers said they marked a partial closing of foreign runner registrations after September concluded, something that led to predict registration of the largest number of participants in the history of the event.
Those in charge of Marabana appear to be really satisfied with the course of events, 45 days ahead of the official closing of the online registration.
As an important data to boost optimism, they recalled that online registration of foreign runners on November, 2013, was 187 and 45 days ahead of the event, the number has almost doubled.
In that reference, Marabana officials, taking into consideration that participation of foreigners could exceed the historic figure of 400, have decided to extend the online-registration period for Cubans until October 30th.
The most recognized long-distance and middle-distance races will be held on November 16th, and Maracuba, a popular simultaneous race in all Cuban municipalities, will be held one day before.
