Titans Baseball Club - Philippines

MANILA - For much of last Saturday afternoon at the Rizal Memorial Baseball Stadium, the Titans offense was held at bay by the RP National Team. It took until 26 outs were recorded before what would have been another classic Titans comeback short-circuited as the Nats held on for a 5-3 decision over the Orange.

Right-hander Charlie Labrador stymied the Titans with eight scoreless innings of two-hit ball, spotting a nasty fastball while painting the strike zone and setting up hitters for pop-ups and weak grounders.

Nats closer Ruel Batoto followed suit, quickly retiring the first two orangemen in the bottom of the ninth. But it would be gut-wrenching until the last out as Batoto would run into trouble with the heart of the Titans line-up.

Second-sacker Kishii Kho, who made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch to defuse a seventh inning Nats rally, beat a two-out grounder to second for an infield hit. C Leslie Suntay drilled the next pitch to left-center for an rbi-double to break the shutout. CF Donelly Edmonds then jumped on an 0-2 pitch for another run-scoring double that almost cleared the centerfield porch. SS Bacchus Ledesma followed with an rbi-double to the gap in left-centerfield that brought the tying run to the plate and jitters into the Nats dugout.

But as luck would have it, Bambol Servo popped up on Batoto's second offering to end the game.

The Nats opened the scoring in the second inning by playing small ball to push across a pair of unearned runs off Titans starter Arjay Santos. Joey Ponce's rbi-triple plated another in the sixth. Despite the shaky Titans infield behind him, Santos was almost as effective as Labrador, giving up just one earned run on four hits, [a pair of walks] and a hit batsman over six innings.

Reliever Arvin Cirunay took over in the seventh, surrendered a pair of hits, but was bailed out by Kho to keep the game within reach. There would be no solace in the eighth when he served up a bases-loaded two-out linedrive that just glanced off third baseman Kelly Culubong's glove to give the Nats a 5-0 cushion.

"Maganda ang nilalaro ninyo. Ito ang mga [game] na dapat mapalabas na [televised]." (You [Titans] are playing good [baseball]. These are the games that should be shown on television), said Philippine Amateur Baseball Association President Hector Navasero, echoing what Angeles University Foundation Chancellor Dr. Emmanuel Angeles asked from the Titans weeks ago: "Please try to give the National Team a difficult time and let them prove that they (RP team) are the best among the best in the country."