Munti blasts Tanauan, tops Junior League

MANILA, Philippines - Muntinlupa leaned on Dio Remollo’s hot bat to score an abbreviated 12-1 win over Tanauan and crown itself the Junior League baseball champion in the 2009 Philippine Series at the Rizal Memorial ballpark.

Remollo posted five RBIs (runs batted in) and made his Muntinlupa teammates look good on the final day of the weeklong event, which drew more than a thousand players from 94 teams nationwide.

Hasimoto Francisco and Carlos Antonio Manzano scored on Remollo’s two-run single at the bottom of the first inning, and Angelo Martinez followed suit to give Muntinlupa an early 3-0 advantage.

Muntinlupa added four more runs in the second inning where Tanauan only scored once. Five more runs at the top of the third inning, behind the hits of Remollo and Manzano, sealed the victory for the 13-14-year-old batters from the south.

The mercy rule, which awards an outright win to a team that leads by 10 runs inside five innings, was applied.

Muntinlupa won all its five matches in the eliminations, most of them in runaway fashion. Only Marikina managed to come close to Muntinlupa, losing their match, 4-3.

Miguel Salud was superb on the mound, and made it very difficult for Tanauan to get a hit. Tanauan’s lone run was provided by Russel Mendoza following an RBI single from Lorenz Perez.

“Finally after three tries we made it through determination of the boys and we exploited the weakness of Tanauan at the mound because of fatigue in the semis,” Muntinlupa coach Joel Palanog said.

The champion team, managed by Greg Mihalik and Tin Tin Remollo, advanced to the Asia Pacific Little League championship to be held in Indonesia this June where tickets to the World Series in the US are up for grabs.

In other finals matches, ILLAM defeated Tanauan, 15-5, in Senior League baseball; ILLAM nipped Bacolod East, 5-2, in Junior League softball; ILLAM whipped Muntinlupa, 10-2, in Little League baseball; and Cavite stunned Palayan, 12-11, in Little League softball.

“We have proven that Little League is not only for ILLAM. It’s for everybody,” Muntinlupa official Ping Remollo said along with Muntinlupa Little League president Rally Martinez.