The European Championship stays in Bologna.. Nettuno, San Marino and Parma prepare for the final sprint.

Unipol Bologna brought home their second consecutive European Champions Cup just this past Friday, beating their opponent, Rimini, in back-to-back games. It was their third cup since 2010 and their fifth overall since the tournament began back in 1963. Although Bologna’s recent success in this EU tournament is extremely impressive, we’ll have to wait and see if they’ll be able to come close to Parma’s leading thirteen overall titles, or even the Neptunus Rotterdam’s four consecutive cups from 2000 to 2004. With the two victories over on Thursday and Friday, Bologna went undefeated in this year’s tournament, winning all 5 games in Germany, and sweeping the best of three series over Rimini for the championship. An impressive feat at that, especially considering they went up against the best that Europe has to offer in terms of club teams, they are a team built to win, and win they did.. Now its time for Nanni’s club to change their focus for the last six game of the IBL’s regular season, as they sit only one game back of home field advantage, chasing the very same opponent that they took the EU cup from.

Rimini, the runners up of this year’s event, are also a team built to win.. but maybe in a just two game a week (IBL regular season schedule) series, not a possible three. With that said, there is defiantly no knock at the arms that Pirates do have on deck. However this past weekend didn’t go exactly the way that Catanoso and Illuminati (pitching coach) had planed. A rough go at it by one of the leagues top pitcher, Marquez (1.01 regular season ERA), in game one, and only three outs away from a victory with Bazardo on the bump and a fresh Corradini all set up for a game three when Infante who ruined the party with a game tying homer in game two. A game that was later lost with a couple of two out knocks, and topped off with a fairly easy save that was picked up by Pugliese.

There are many out there that believe that the matchup we saw this past Thursday and Friday was a preview of the 2013 IBL finals. The likelihood of this happening is very high on paper, but do note that the lineups will without a doubt be very different when Catanoso and Nanni post them up on their respective dugout walls. What’s this mean? Well Castro with his .295 average and 11 doubles will be back at third for Rimini, well the likely hood that one of the leagues top pitchers, Matteo D’Angelo, will suit up again Bologna for the rest of the season is very unlikely. On a side note, there is a big possibility that Luca Panerati will rejoin Unipol Bologan, ultimately picking up any slack that may be lost by the departure of D’Angelo.

With six games left in the Italian Baseball Leagues Regular schedule there is still a lot to be decided between the top five clubs. At the moment only one game separates the top two, Rimini and Bologna, while Nettuno and T&A San Marino are currently tied for the 3(4) spot, 2 games back of Bologna. Finally Parma continues to make waves, as they only need to make up 2 games to be in contention for that last postseason spot, a task that was thought impossible to many when the season began back in April. Taking a look at all this clubs currently in contension, it looks as if Parma may have the easy path in terms of the competition that they need to face off against (Grosseto, Novara, Reggio Emilia – all teams all teams that are currently sitting under .500). Both Nettuno and San Marino still have series against the current 1 and 2 in the league (Rimini and Bologna), although San Marino may have a little bit of a tougher time when they go up against Yepez, Litzinger (the duo beat San Marino earlier this year) and Ronch dei Legonari this upcoming weekend on the road. The heats now officially on, let’s see what club is destined to handle it.