NU wins UAAP baseball title

MANILA (PNA) — “Good teams win games, but great teams win championships.”
With this proposition, inculcated in their players’ mind, the National University Bulldogs finally reaped the fruits of their three-year build up program by winning the 74TH UAAP baseball championship.
It’s NU’s only third title since forming the “Big Three,” along with the University of the Philippines and University of Santo Tomas.
The three separated from the NCAA and organized the varsity league in 1938.
The latest championship was NU’s third since completing a back-to-back feat in the 1965-66 and 1966-67 season.
Baseball, actually, is the only team sport where NU athletes reign supreme in the varsity league.
This started in the Bulldogs’ glorious years in the 60s when Jose “Pepe” Pinga, acknowledged as the finest short stop Philippine baseball has produced, Simplicio Castillo, Roberto Ballesteros, Toti Ballesteros and Gay Concepcion were battling the likes of legends Filomeno “Boy” Codinera, Reynaldo “Baby” Manzanarez and Rudy Lugay in both the collegiate and commercial leaagues.
“If possible, we want to build an NU dynasty in baseball to give honor to “Mommy” (Leticia) Paguia whose spirit has kept baseball alive in the UAAP even years after her death, Zamora said.
The late “Mommy” Paguia is still acknowledged as the matriarch of the baseball and softball movement in the country and had been a long-time high-ranking officials of both the Baseball Federation of Asia and the Amateur Softball Association-Asia (ASA-Asia), she helped organize.