Final Olympic Qualifier Begin!
olympicbaseball March 8th, 2008
The 2008 Final Olympic Baseball Qualifying Tournament has opened on Friday. The first four game winners are Korea, Canada, Australia and Chinese Taipei.
As expect, Korea, Australia and Chinese Taipei all defeat their opponent. As for a tough game between Canada and Mexico, both got 18 hits, both used six pitchers, but Canada take advantage on four errors with timely hitting, won by five runs.
“That’s international baseball because you never know,” Canadian manager Terry Puhl said in a news release. “Mexico has a lot of experienced hitters and they got back into the game. They just kept coming at us every inning and that’s a trademark of this ball club.”
“That’s a big win for us right off the bat,” said Canadian second baseman Stubby Clapp of Windsor, Ont. “It wasn’t pretty, but we hung in there and kept swinging the bats and our pitchers kept going out there, attacking the strike zone and they did a great job.”
Both Canada and Mexico are not fielding their best teams as some players are vying for a spot with teams at Major League Baseball spring training in Florida and Arizona.
Baseball Canada lobbied last fall to have the tournament rescheduled, but was rebuffed by the International Baseball Federation.
Pitchers Steve Green and T.J. Burton cemented the Canadian win on Friday, combining to shut out Mexico over the final 2 2/3 innings.
Canada jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a pair of hits by Mike Saunders and Matt Rogelstad. Another run in the second and three more in the third frame gave the red and white a seemingly comfortable advantage.
But Carlos Valencia helped vault Mexico into the lead in the bottom of the inning with a two-run home run before the Canadians plated three runs in the fourth to move ahead 9-8.
In Canada’s five-run seventh inning, Adam Stern and Jimmy VanOstrand drove in two runs apiece on a double and triple respectively.
“It’s a good start for us to beat a team like Mexico,” said Rogelstad, who went 3-for-4 with three runs scored. “We came out ready to play. We got some runs early in the game and we were able to keep that going.”
Below is the score and result of Game 1:
| Game 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
| Korea | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 12 | 0 |
| South Africa | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
WP: Son (1-0) LP: Verschuren (0-1)
RECAP BOX SCORE PLAY BY PLAY
| Game 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
| Canada | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 18 | 2 |
| Mexico | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 18 | 4 |
WP: Richmond (1-0) LP: Alvarez Ramirez (0-1) HR: Carlos Valencia (1, 3inning)
RECAP BOX SCORE PLAY Y PLAY
| Game 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
| Australia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 0 |
| Germany | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
WP: Mildren (1-0) LP: Henkenjohann (0-1)
RECAP BOX SCORE PLAY BY PLAY
| Game4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
| Spain | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | ? | ? | 3 | 6 | 1 |
| Chinese Taipei | 2 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ? | ? | 13 | 12 | 0 |
WP: Chiang (1-0) LP: Olivera Cavero (0-1) HR: Chen-Ming Peng (1, 1st inning), Kuo-Hui Lo (1, 4th inning)
RECAP BOX SCORE PLAY Y PLAY
|
Current standing (2008/3/7) |
|||
| TEAM | W-L | PCT. | GB |
| AUSTRALIA | 1-0 | 1.000 | – |
| CANADA | 1-0 | 1.000 | – |
| CHINESE TAIPEI | 1-0 | 1.000 | – |
| KOREA | 1-0 | 1.000 | – |
| GERMANY | 0-1 | .000 | 1.0 |
| MEXICO | 0-1 | .000 | 1.0 |
| SOUTH AFRICA | 0-1 | .000 | 1.0 |
| SPAIN | 0-1 | .000 | 1.0 |
[...] Camden Clubhouse | Baltimore Orioles Blog wrote an interesting post today and shared it with the world.Here’s a quick excerpt [...]