(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photos by Henk Seppen)
     Smith adds 2 homeruns; Ricardo & De Caster make debut in Nicaragua
Nederlands
  CHINANDEGA / RIVAS (Nicaragua) -
Curaçao-born Dutch professional Curt Smith has added two more homeruns on Friday (November 18) to increase his season-total to seven to lead the Liga de Béisbol Profesional Nacional, which is in its third full week.
Also on Friday, two other Netherlands Team-players appeared in their first game of the Nicaraguan professional competition.
Yurendell de Caster returned to Tigres de Chinandega, where he also played last season.
Making his debut was catcher Dashenko Ricardo, who also plays for Tigres, which is also the team of Smith.
Both De Caster and Ricardo also are from Curaçao.
Venezuelan Wuillians Vásquez also homered again and has extended his hitting streak since the start of the season to sixteen.
Last week, Smith's streak ended after ten games.
22-year old Aruban pitcher Francisco Taveras also has signed with Tigres.
He will not see much action for the team in the upcoming weeks, as he is one of the eight Dutch players of the roster of Team Europe, which will play again in the Asia Winter Baseball League in Taiwan.
That season opens next Friday.
Since his hitting streak ended a week ago, Smith has started a new one.
Last Tuesday (November 15), he was 1-for-3 and scored a run in a 7-5 loss against Gigantes de Rivas.
The next day, Tigres won 8-6 against Gigantes and this time, Smith was 2-for-4 with a double and batted in three runs.
On Friday, Tigres outscored Indios del Bóer 10-5 on 17 basehits.
Three of these hits were collected by Smith, two of them homeruns, both solos.
Smith scored twice and batted in two runs.
Smith hit his first homerun in the fifth inning off of Elvin Ramírez, then homered again in the seventh inning off of Róger Marín.
In the same game, Dashenko Ricardo and Yurendell de Caster played in their first game of the season for Tigres.
A week ago, the two were in Japan with the Netherlands Kingdom Team to participate in the Samurai Japan Warm-Up Games in Tokyo.
Ricardo was 2-for-4 in his debut, scored once and also batted in a run.
De Caster was 2-for-5 and scored twice.
This year, Ricardo played in his third season in the Dutch big league.
After having played two seasons for Kinheim, he this year was the catcher for Curaçao Neptunus.
Earlier this month, Ricardo also signed to play for Lincoln Saltdogs in the American Association (Independent League) next year.
There, he also will be a teammate of Smith.
Also on Friday, Wuillians Vásquez was 2-for-3 with a double and a homerun for Gigantes de Rivas in a 5-4 loss against Oriental de Granada.
With his homerun, Vásquez extended his hitting streak to 16 games and put Gigantes ahead 1-0 in the fourth inning.
Canadian Michael Crouse was 4-for-4 with a run and an RBI in his debut-game for Oriental.
(November 19)
Related Articles:
 Hitting streak Curt Smith ends; Vásquez extends streak. (November 15)
Curt Smith shows power in Nicaragua. (November 7)
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