Peio Etxeberria and Zabaleta won the San Fermín tournament last year after beating Urrutikoetxea and Albisu. /
It will have the San Fermín and San Mateo fairs, but the promoters are working to fit the Masters among the rest of the summer events
The summer of professional baseball is beginning to be chiseled and, despite the fact that the pandemic has already given a truce and the frontons lack capacity reduction and masks are not necessary either, it may be quite similar to last year. The Liga de Empresa de Pelota a Mano (LEP.M) has begun to work on shaping it with the idea of organizing the San Fermín and San Mateo fairs, and the Caixabank Masters.
The Navarra and La Rioja events are the most powerful on the summer calendar due to the public response they receive, so they will have the prominence they require. Everything indicates that they will recover the eight-day format with which the competitions were held before the virus made its appearance instead of the five and four that they had last year.
What the promoters will have to figure out is how to fit the Caixabank Masters from July to September into the rest of the small-format fairs that will be held in the Basque capitals and those municipalities that will recover normality in what refers to their patron saint festivities. This competition began in the midst of a pandemic two years ago and was a lifesaver for the delicate situation that companies were going through at the time. The Northern Territorial Director of the banking entity, Kepa Badiola, announced at the beginning of the month in the Manomanista presentation that the contract had been renewed for two years and the operators need to find the formula to see how to best adapt to these appointments. And others if they will remain as they were until three years ago because some had lowered their ability to call in terms of public reference.
It is likely that the Navarran and Riojan events will return to the eight-day format from before the pandemic
Although in its first edition the tournament had a double-round format because no more events could be organized, last year it was made up of seven league days, a play-off, semifinals and a final. It ended in mid-September in Vitoria and this year it is scheduled to do so in the Navarran capital.
The companies have time to definitively shape the summer season because the last official championship of the season is in full swing and will not conclude until the end of next month at the fronton of the Navarra Arena multipurpose space.
Afterwards, it is expected that the professional pelotaris will have a week and a half of vacation before the eliminatory rounds of the Cuatro y Medio Navarra -each promoter for its branch- in different municipalities. As is tradition, the final will be on July 7 in the morning. By then the full summer calendar will be known.
Today in Oiartzun
The second day of the heads-up quarter-finals starts tonight (10:00 p.m.) at the Madalessoro pediment in Oiartzun. Artola, who played on Monday and has only had four days off, faces Rezusta in a duel in which both are forced to win if they don’t want to lose a good part of their chances of being in the semifinals along the way. The festival will open with the match between Urrutikoetxea-Imaz and Peña II-Albisu.
