THE Philippine Blu Boys took a second consecutive loss at the World Baseball and Softball Confederation Men’s Softball World Cup but not without a fight.
Another big fight at that.
The national men’s softball team gave another powerhouse team Cuba a scare in a 1-3 setback over the weekend.
That was the second near-upset by the Blu Boys, who started out their campaign in big-time softball with a 0-1 defeat to the dreaded Team USA.
“Despite the losses, we take pride in the performance of our team in these close games, considering that we are the lowest ranked at 21st in the field,” Amateur Softball Association of the Philippines president Jean Henri Lhuillier said.
“We have not lost hope that they can still score a victory in their last two games against New Zealand and the Czech Republic,” Lhuillier added.
Holding their own in the first two innings, the Cebuana Lhuillier-backed Blu Boys allowed Cuban Yesander Rodriguez to score a homerun in the third inning that sparked their world-class opponents’ offense. It was followed by another run by Anibal Vaillant.
The Blu Boys kept the match close when Julius Diaz scored in the fifth inning for the team’s very first run in the tournament featuring 24 qualifiers from different regions in the world.
Rodriguez finished off the Blu Boys in the sixth inning with his second run.
“We were much better today than yesterday [against US] but we were not hitting the balls,” Blu Boys coach Jasper Cabrera said. “Our main weapon here is speed, but we need to hit the ball for us to use our speed.”
Defending champion Argentina, meanwhile, shut out the US, 6-0.
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