After finishing the regular season in third place, the Palau Community College (PCC) Mesekiu Baseball Team fought their way into the 2014 Palau Major League (PML) Championship against the defending champions Airai Aces.
To reach the championship game, the young PCC Mesekiu Team easily disposed Ngebeches team by winning the first two games of a best-of-three play-off series. PCC then upset the pennant winners from Ngerbeched behind the striking pitch of David Salapwa and the impressive offensive run-production of Vincent Kulas, Ray Rumong, and veteran Kaleb Meltel. The win set up a best-of-five championship series with the defending champions Airai Aces.
On Wednesday, May 21, 2014 PCC suffered a lopsided loss to the Airai Aces. However, the team quickly regrouped and even the series at 1-1 on Saturday, May 24, 2014 with a come-from-behind win. In the bottom of the ninth-inning and the final inning, with a score of 9-4 in favor of Airai and one out, PCC mounted a rally and quickly loaded the bases. Costly defensive errors by Airai and timely hitting allowed PCC to score three runs cutting the lead to only two with two outs.
The two teams met again on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 and once again Airai’s offense proved too much for the young PCC team. Airai Aces easily won by a score of 20-10.
The fourth game of the 2014 PML Championship was played on Thursday, May 28, 2014. PCC was in a do-or-die situation while Airai looked to retain the championship. Relying on their experience, Airai took on early 5-1 level in the opening inning. Their offensive attack forced PCC starting pitcher Daily Kinto out of the game. Ray Rumong then came in and managed to keep them off base. Then with a potential tying run at third and the winning run at second, Oreokl Daniel lined a walk-off single to score both the tying of winning runs for a final score of 11-10. In the top of the final inning PCC Mesekiu mounted a rally and managed to score three runs to cut the difficult for a final score of 12-7.
Team Airai retained the championship with PCC in runner-up position and Ngerbeched in third position.
You can access the PDF files of PCC's weekly newsletter archive here.
Mesekiu News