{"id":286449,"date":"2018-10-11T06:06:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T20:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=286449"},"modified":"2018-10-11T06:06:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T20:06:42","slug":"bears-take-first-finals-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/bears-take-first-finals-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears take first finals seat"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Chalan Kanoa Bears players and officials huddle to celebrate their Game 2 win over the Aces in their best-of-five semis series in the 2018 Saipan Baseball League last Tuesday night at the Francisco \u201cTan Ko\u201d Palacios Ballfield. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Chalan Kanoa Bears marched into the finals of the 2018 Saipan Baseball League after sweeping the Aces following a 10-7 win in Game 2 of their semis series last Tuesday night at the Francisco \u201cTan Ko\u201d Palacios Ballfield.<\/p>\n

A seven-run top of the second inning gave the Bears the control in the second match of the best-of-three semis series. They then withstood the Aces\u2019 rally in the last inning to take the first finals seat and dethrone the 2017 champions.<\/p>\n

The Bears were ahead by only one, 3-2, after one complete inning when A.J. Lizama\u2019s two-run double sparked the pennant champion\u2019s surge at the top of the second. Shakobe Rangamar added a two-run single, while Henry Lizama also brought two home with his single, and Kiku Lizama had an RBI single for a 10-2 lead. <\/p>\n

Earlier at the top of the first Kiku reached off a fielder\u2019s choice for the Bears\u2019 first run. Virgil Secharmidal and Richard Dela Cruz then scored of the Aces\u2019 defensive mishaps to take the shaky lead after their opponents got two runs at the bottom of the opening inning off Mike Iguel\u2019s RBI double and Angel Falig\u2019s sacrifice fly.<\/p>\n

After giving up seven runs to the Bears in the second inning, the Aces tightened up their defense in the ensuing plays to remain in the game. On offense, Tyrone Omar added one run for the Aces at the bottom of the third off the Bears\u2019 error, while Falig blasted a two-run single in the fourth inning to trim the deficit, 5-10.<\/p>\n

The Bears failed to widen the gap when they went scoreless from the third to ninth inning and were threatened by the deposed champion at the bottom of the last, no thanks to Benwachi Taisacan\u2019s round-tripper.<\/p>\n

The lefty, with one out and Falig on first base, was called for two outs and two balls when he took A.J. Lizama\u2019s fifth pitch and hit an over-the-fence homer at rightfield and brought Falig home. Taisacan\u2019s homer cut the deficit to 3 and the Aces stayed in the game when Barry Sunumai walked. However, he was left stranded there and the Aces were eliminated when the Bears got the last two outs. A.J. Lizama fanned Jeremy Atalig and second baseman Fred Songao caught Juan Iguel\u2019s line drive.<\/p>\n

With the sweep, the Bears now await the winner of the other semis series between Go See Mark and the Mariners. GSM won Game 1 last Monday, 14-10, but the Mariners placed the opener under protest, as the former used a wrong player at leftfield. League officials have yet to decide on the protest, while GSM and the Mariners played Game 2 of the series last night and results of their match were unavailable at press time.<\/p>\n

The Bears and the winner in the GSM-Mariners tiff will duel in a best-of-five title series later this month, as SBL will push back the finale to give way to a tournament at the Capital Hill Ballfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chalan Kanoa Bears marched into the finals of the 2018 Saipan Baseball League after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":286451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3291,278,133,1352],"class_list":["post-286449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-gsm","tag-rbi","tag-run","tag-saipan-baseball-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}