(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 CEB Cup-tournament opens in France
Nederlands
  ROUEN / CHARTRES (France) -
On Wednesday (June 1), the new CEB Cup-tournament went underway in two French cities.
The event is one of the European club-competitions that were introduced for this year.
The highest level tournament is the European Champions Cup, which opened in Tuesday in Rimini (Italy) and Serravalle (San Marino).
Through last year since 2008, the best-of-three final (and before that the Final Four) was preceeded by two Qualifying Tournament.
But that event is now back to one tournament, which ends with a deciding championship-final.
The second highest club-competition organized by the European Baseball Confederation (CEB) is that of the CEB Cup.
The country of the winning team of this event will promote to the European Champions Cup.
The country in last place relegates to the new Federations Cup.
The first edition of that tournament will be held June 21-26 in the Czech city of Brno.
The winning country of the Federations Cup promotes to the CEB Cup.
The two countries in last place will relegate to the Federations Cup Qualifier.
There will two Federations Cup Qualifying Tournaments with the champions' country promoting to the Federation Cup.
The first two Qualifiers also will take place later this month in London (Great Britain, June 21-26) and Sant Boi de Llobregat (Spain, June 20-25).
The CEB Cup opened on Wednesday in the historic French city of Rouen.
Through the day, three games were played there, while one game was played in Chartres, another historic place.
Eight teams are participating, divided over two pools.
Playing in Pool A are Les Barracudas Montpellier (France), Minsk (Belarus), Olimpija Karlovac (Croatia) and Vienna Wanderers (Austria).
Pool B is compiled of KNTU Elizavetgrad (Ukraine), Nada Split (Croatia), Rouen Huskies (France) and Zürich Barracudas (Switzerland).
On Day 1, it was host Rouen Huskies that won big in the evening with a 17-0 score in five innings against Nada Split.
Two Dutch umpires worked this game.
Veteran umpire Henri van Heijningen was behind the plate in this game, while Stenar van Groningen Schinkel was at third base.
The French had a big 7-run rally in the fifth inning, but registered only eight basehits in the game.
Larry Infante accounted for four of those hits, including a 3-run homerun.
He also scored four runs and batted in eight, making him responsible for eleven of the 17 runs Rouen scored.
Nada Split committed seven defensive errors, while four pitchers walked eight batters.
Marc-André Habeck went the distance for Rouen.
He struckout seven batters and gave up only one basehit.
Rouen is managed by Keino Perez, who in the past has pitched in the Dutch big league for Almere '90.
The day began with a 6-3 win for Zürich Barracudas against KNTU Elizavetgrad.
The Swiss faced a 2-0 deficit after one inning, came alongside in the third, then took more distance in the following innings.
Both teams had ten basehits.
Roman Boiko had three hits for the Ukrainian squad.
One of the ten Swiss basehits was hit by Dutchman Jeroen Hermans, who has played in the Dutch big league in the past for Neptunus, Sparta-Feyenoord, Amsterdam Pirates and UVV.
Christopher Michals threw all nine innings for Zürich.
In the next game, Olimpija Karlovac also won with a 6-3 score against Minsk.
Trailing 1-0, Minsk took a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning.
Olimpija got one run back in its sixth, came alongside in the seventh and then scored three runs in the eighth.
Kruno Gojkovic went 4-for-5 for Karlovac.
Winning pitcher Michael Darrah threw a complete game and struckout nine batters.
In the lone game played in Chartres, Wanderers Vienna won only 2-0 against Barracudas Montpellier.
The Austrian squad scored both runs in the top of the ninth inning.
With one out, Andrew Oberthaler singled and scored on a following double by Ryoma Watanabe.
The latter went on to score the second run on a wild pitch.
Winning pitcher Christian Tomsich gave up six hits and went the distance for Vienna.
(June 1)
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