Best winning streaks in baseball and other sports.
The eight consecutive successes presented by the Matanzas team up to this Thursday, December 7th in the Second Elite League of Cuban Baseball, is still far from the results achieved by teams of the same name in previous versions of the Cuban championships or from the country’s record held by Mineros for 51 years.
In the case of Matanzas let’s remember that in Series 56 (2016-2017), when the team established a record of 42 wins with only three defeats in the initial round of the competition and 70 wins for 90-game tournaments, it reached 19 consecutive victories, to leave behind the 18 achieved by the 1984 champion Citricultores.
The Cocodrilos, in that first round of the 56th season, was sensational when they won all 15 sub-series, twelve of them by sweeps.
For teams of the province the most significant consecutive winning streaks in National Series have been the 11, of Henequeneros in its debut as a team in the campaign from 1965 to 1966, directed by Juan Bregio and the mentioned 18 of Citricultores, under the command of Tomás Soto in the XXIII season and the 19 of Matanzas, led by Víctor Mesa, in the 56th Series.
Regarding the old record of 27 consecutive smiles of Mineros in the period from 1971 to 1972, it is curious to note that they were not enough to win the championship, which was snatched by Azucareros.
In American Major League Baseball, the 26 wins in a row by the National League’s New York Giants has been unattainable since 1916. The Cleveland Indians, in 2017, reached 22 wins, a mark for the American League and second-best all-time.
The most impressive, in terms of baseball streaks, took place in the distant 1907 in the Negro Leagues of the United States. That year the Chicago Leland Giants team managed to win no less than 48 games without the shadow of a defeat.
In the case of other sports, the string of more than 50 successes of the Cuban women’s volleyball team in 1988 deserves recognition; in U.S. professional basketball, the Golden State’s record in 2015-16 is significant, with 54 consecutive home wins and a total of 73 and nine in the competition; and in European soccer, the 56 unbeaten victories of Spain’s national team in World Cup qualifiers.
Written by Francisco Soriano.
