Holguin off Campechuela in Champion Clubs Baseball Tourney

The Sultanes of Holguín, champions of this province, will face on Saturday 27 and if necessary on Sunday 28, at Jesús Feliú Leyva stadium, the Azucareros of Campechuela, champions from Granma province, at the beginning of the XVII edition of the Tournament of Club Baseball Champions, which has been in recess since 2008.

Holguin team has reached ten provincial crowns, while the squad from Campechuela has won eleven times the Granma Baseball League.

The event will be played by the single elimination system with three-game sub-series, with double games of seven innings on Saturdays and, if necessary, single games of nine games on Sundays.

That is why during this Saturday and Sunday, in addition to the matches between Sultanes and Azucareros (Series 2), we will have in the Eastern Zone the challenges of Santiago de Cuba vs. Rayos de Maisí de Guantánamo (Series 1); Los Goliats of Las Tunas vs. Camagüey (Series 3) and Trinidad of Sancti Spíritus vs. Leopardos of Primero de Enero from Ciego de Ávila (Series 4).

For the Western region will compete: Santa Clara of Villa Clara vs. Cienfuegos (Series 5), Unión de Reyes of Matanzas vs. Melena del Sur of Mayabeque (Series 6), El Cerro of Havana vs. Combinado Deportivo Irene Hernández of Isla de la Juventud (Series 7) and Alquízar of Artemisa vs. Mantua of Pinar del Río (Series 8).

Thus, the eight winning teams in the first stage will face each other in the quarterfinals on Saturday, February 3 and Sunday, February 4. Here, the winners of Series 1 will compete against the winners of Series 2, and so on, the winners of Series 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6 and 7 vs. 8.

The semifinals, at the zone level, will take place on February 10 and 11, and the title match will be played on February 17 and 18 of the same month.

The Champion Clubs Tournament was held without interruption from 1992 to 2008, and Guantánamo was the most winning team with five titles (1995, 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2008).

Pinar del Río is the second in terms of crowns achieved in these competitions with four (1992, 1993, 1994 and 2005), Bayamo, capital of Granma, reached the top of the podium on three occasions (2002, 2006 and 2007) and Las Tunas won two diadems (2000 and 2001).

The municipality of Matanzas won the throne in 1997, while the only teams that won the title without being provincial capitals were the Vaqueros de Calixto García (Holguín) in 1996, and Primero de Enero (Ciego de Ávila), in 2004.