{"id":358673,"date":"2021-12-30T06:01:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T20:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=358673"},"modified":"2021-12-30T06:01:32","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T20:01:32","slug":"tasa-wants-automatic-slots-for-tinian-rota-baseball-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/tasa-wants-automatic-slots-for-tinian-rota-baseball-players\/","title":{"rendered":"TASA wants \u2018automatic slots\u2019 for Tinian, Rota baseball players"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_358674\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-358674\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-358674\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/TASA-pix-1.jpg\" alt=\"CNMI National Baseball Team tryouts \" width=\"600\" height=\"487\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-358674\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left, Tinian baseball players Esteban K. Sablan, Dustin K. Sablan, Bradley P. Lizama, and Peter C. Cepeda were among the 20 players cut from the CNMI National Baseball Team tryouts last Dec. 15. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Tinian Amateur Sports Association wants Tinian and Rota to be each granted an automatic slot in the CNMI National Baseball Team for next year\u2019s Northern Marianas Pacific Mini Games.<\/p>\n<p>TASA president Jose Kiyoshi said for the sake of development the Saipan Baseball League should consider including a player each from its two sister islands in the national team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is one of the disadvantages Tinian and Rota face every time we have the opportunity to try out for the national team. My thoughts are they should give two automatic slots for Tinian and Rota in the national team,\u201d he told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>Kiyoshi\u2019s suggestion came after CNMI national baseball team manager Manny Sablan and coaches Deron Flores and Gary Cruz made their first cut last Dec. 15.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 56 original players trying out to represent the islands in the quadrennial meet next year, only 36 remain.<\/p>\n<p>Tinian players Dustin Sablan, Peter Cepeda, Bradley Lizama, and Bing Sablan and Rota players Luis Hocog and Daniel Rangamar didn\u2019t make it in the first cut.<\/p>\n<p>Kiyoshi said the biggest issue for Tinian players was attendance, as the two Sablans, Cepeda, and Lizama weren\u2019t able to come back to the tryouts after flights from Tinian to Saipan were suspended following Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey got cut I believe because of attendance. Star Marianas Air suspending flights was a huge factor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The TASA head said in his humble opinion it was never a question of talent when it comes to the players from Tinian.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeeing this guys play they are all quality players in my opinion, but the coaches and manager didn\u2019t put into account.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kiyoshi also wants TASA and its counterpart on Rota to become members of the Northern Marianas Sports Association board.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have brought this attention up to my local leadership but until now no feedback yet. It\u2019s frustrating when we try to do something right for the betterment of our community. But that would not stop me from pushing my opinions or thoughts about the disadvantages we face as a sports organization from Tinian and Rota.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A former U.S. Marine, Kiyoshi returned to Tinian in 1995 and since then has become an active volunteer in youth sports as well as in the island\u2019s Boys Scout and Cub Scout programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tinian Amateur Sports Association wants Tinian and Rota to be each granted an automatic&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":358675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3868],"class_list":["post-358673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-tasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358673","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}