Matanzas native Gerardo Rionda’s 7 hits in a game reaches 51 years.

That offensive explosion on May 4th, 1974, in Palmar de Junco, has not been repeated by the great Cuban hitters at any level, national and international. The mark seems eternal.

The only Cuban to connect seven hits in a baseball game is Gerardo Rionda Pestana from Matanzas.

That May 4t, 1974, the Palmar de Junco, the old facility in the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo, in the city of Matanzas, would once again add to its rich history the feat of a young man trained in its grounds. Nobody could have calculated that that performance would last as a Cuban record, now 51 years old, and a possible unbreakable mark of our tournaments, if we analyze that with the application of the Shiller tiebreaker rule, the games do not extend much, which makes it difficult for a player to reach eight uncatchable runs.

That day, in the first game of a scheduled doubleheader between Henequeneros and Oriente, which was extended to eleven innings, the feat that we remember every year took place. Rionda was a player who was characterized by his defense, not by his offense. He batted in ten national championships and five Selectives for a poor average of 215, with 340 hits, with an average of 34 per season. But that day of the National Series number XIII was reserved in the rich history of Cuban baseball for Gerardo Rionda Pestana.

The game started at 6:00 in the afternoon at El Palmar and even with the bat split in one opportunity they managed to hit a run. It was a top pitching that he faced: Orlando Figueredo, Eliecer Velázquez and Rafael Castillo. Of course, the mark is produced because the game went to extra innings, eleven chapters. He already had six hits in the ninth and had equaled the national record. In the eleventh episode, number seven appeared, a hit over second. The audience gave him the biggest ovation he received in his sports career and Rionda jumped excitedly, he had batted 7-7.

In the second at-bat, after failing on a very close play at first, he produced three more hits. It was the last sub-series of the championship and in the three games he hit twelve hits in 15 at-bats. That offensive explosion on May 4th, 1974, in Palmar de Junco, has not been repeated by the great Cuban hitters at any level, national and international. The mark seems eternal.

Written by Francisco Soriano.