Parma perfect; Bologna, Rimini, Grosetto take two out of three

ROME – Over the last few years, the Italian Baseball League’s hottest team during the second-half of the season has been Cariparma Parma. The Parmagiani usually don’t kick-off their season until the second-half of play, and they may have finally burned off the extra weight gained during the off-season, which is no easy task while living in a gastronomically rich region that boasts fried bread, blocks of hard cheese and cold cuts that would even make Oscar Mayer envious.  Nevertheless, Parma pulled off back-to-back-to-back wins over hapless Novara, and this series may serve as Parma’s launching pad to rise in the standings and tinker within playoff berth territory.

First-place Bologna, no stranger to fine cuisine, cooked up Nettuno for two wins, in a series that was extremely competitive.  Bologna took the first and third games, 4-2 and 3-1.  Nettuno ended any thought of a sweep by taking the second game 4-2.  Nettuno gave up quite a bit of ground to fifth-place Parma and now rests just three games ahead of Parma. 

Only the top four teams in the standings will move on to the prestigious post-season, where crowds fill the stadiums and fans begin to get serious and often rowdy.

Second-place Rimini split the first two games with Godo before concluding the series with an 11-0, seven-inning shellacking.

The big surprise this week came from Grosseto, which managed to win more games than they lost this weekend, and this from a worthy opponent in San Marino. Grosseto started off with a 2-0 shutout and followed that up nicely with a one-run win, 6-5.  San Marino took out the smelling salts and gouged Grosseto 13-3 to end the game prematurely and invoke the mercy-rule after 8 innings of play.