(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photos by Henk Seppen)
   Team Europe plays another tie in Asia Winter Baseball League
Nederlands
 TAICHUNG (Taiwan) -
Team Europe faced the professional KBO Team from South Korea for the second time on Friday (December 4) in the Asia WInter Baseball League.
The first game ended in a 9-9 tie, today's game ended in a 6-6 tie.
For the Koreans, this was their third tie in the season.
In the evening, the Taiwan Beer CPBL Team won 4-3 against the Japanese NPB Team.
The Korean squad is mostly compiled from young professional players, who are currently serving in the Police and the Army and play in these teams.
But also the teams that played in the Korean Baseball Organization, the Korean Major League, are represented in the squad.
Team Europe initially had a tough start.
Righthander Maickel Rietel made his second start of the season and got one quick out.
He then gave up a double to Sun-Gkon Lee.
A pop-up behind second base then ended in an error when second baseman Luca Martone dropped the ball.
And that resulted in runners on first and second base.
Instead of having two outs and a runner on second base, a 3-run rally followed, as next batters Chi-Hong An, Seung-Yeol Yoon and Do-Hyun Kim all singled.
That resulted in three runs and a quick deficit for the European squad.
Hereafter, Rietel ended the inning himself with a strikeout and fielding a comeback-grounder.
After completion of the inning, Lee, who had started the rally with a double and apparently had injured himself, was replaced by Kyun-Grok Lee, who later played a major offensive role.
That Team Europe has become better in the past few days was underscored moments later, as it had a strong comeback and answered with a 4-run rally in the bottom of the first inning.
After lead-off hitter Urving Kemp struckout, the team got the bases loaded.
First, Sebastiano Poma singled.
When he had connected and let loose of his bat, it hit the Home Plate Umpire on his right under-arm.
He was attended to after completion of the inning.
With Poma on first base, Alberto Mineo walked.
Kevin Weijgertse followed with an infield-hit off of the body of starting pitcher Yoon-Sun Song that loaded the bases.
The lefthander was able to continue, but gave up four runs hereafter.
After a nice at bat, fouling off several pitches, Federico Giordani hit a hard grounder towards short.
There, short stop Hyun Jung made a nice fielding play and attempted to force out the runner on third base, as he had no chance of eliminating Giordani at first base.
But everyone was safe, Giordani was credited with an infield-hit and the Europeans scored their first run.
Next batter Premek Chroust drilled the ball into deep richt-centerfield for a baseclearing, 3-run double that gave Team Europe a 4-3 lead.
The Czech barely missed a grand slam homerun, as the ball landed just in front of the fence on the warning-track.
With Chroust on second base, next batter Mattia Mercuri remarkably enough was hit by a pitch by Song.
It served a purpose, as it set up a force play.
And while spilling four pitches on an intentional walk?
A strikeout and a force out ended the inning.
The Korean squad came alongside immediately in its second at bat off of Rietel.
With one out, Bon-Ki Shin singled and stole second.
Moments later, he scored the tying run on a single by Kyun-Grok Lee, who had just entered the game defensively in the bottom of the first inning.
When next batter Hyun Jung walked, it marked the end for Rietel.
He was relieved by French hurler Leonel Cespedes.
His first delivery ended in a wild pitch that put runners on second and third base, but he followed with a strikeout.
A nice catch by short stop Mattia Mercuri ended the at bat.
| Standings |
| # | Team | G | W | L | T |
| 1 | CPBL Team | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| | KBO Team | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Chinese Taipei Training Team | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| 4 | NPB Team | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| 5 | Team Europe | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
Again, Team Europe responded well, as Urving Kemp led of with a homerun in the bottom of the second inning that gave the squad a renewed 5-4 lead.
The KBO Team came alongside again in the top of the fourth inning off of Cespedes when Kyun-Grok Lee led off with a homerun, his third of the season.
Moments later, they took over the lead.
Next batter Hyun Jung singled, then was able to advance to second base when leftfielder Urving Kemp made a fielding error.
With Jung on second base, Frenchman Owen Ozanich came it to relief Cespedes, but was greeted with a runscoring single by Chi-Hong An that gave the Koreans a 6-5 lead.
Again, Team Europe recovered well and didn't gave away more scoring opportunities.
In the top of the seventh, with two outs, Jun-Hyeok Park reached when first baseman Kevin Weijgertse committed an error.
He stole second base, but stranded there.
In the bottom of the seventh, the squad of Manager Gilberto Gerali made it a 6-6 score.
Alberto Mineo led off with a double off of Song and that marked the end for the Korean starter.
Side-armer Kyu-Hyun An took over, but ran into problems.
First, Kevin Weijgertse reached on an infield-hit.
He batted the ball in front of the catcher and beat the throw to first base.
With runners on first and third base, Federico Giordani then delivered a runscoring bloop-single that made it 6-6.
But a strikeout, force out and groundout then ended the inning.
Matz Schutte became the fourth European pitcher in the eighth inning, taking over for Ozanich, who had done very well.
The Dutch righthander is one of the six professional players on the European roster.
He pitched in 14 games this year in the Rookie League-team of the Minnesota Twins and was 2-2 with a 3.07 ERA.
Schutte gave up a lead-off single, but three outs followed.
...In 2013, Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium was the site...
...of a preliminary round of the World Baseball Classic...
...Last month, it hosted games of the Premier12...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Team Europe got its first batter on base when Freddy Noguera reached on an error.
With one out, he was caught stealing.
Chris Howard followed with a single and that brought in a new pitcher.
Lefthander Jae-Yong Cha (wearing uniform number 109!) took over.
Cha is one of the players that are active in the Korean big league, pitching for Lotte Giants.
He closed the inning with a strikeout.
In the ninth, Schutte gave up another lead-off single to the Koreans, but he was caught stealing moments later.
In the bottom of the ninth, Team Europe was retired in order and with that, the game ended.
And so, the game resulted in the second tie for the Europeans and the third for the Koreans.
Both teams collected 13 basehits.
Kevin Weijgertse was 3-for-5 for Team Europe, which had put on another fine battle.
European reliever Owen Ozanich was named MVP of the game.
The European Team plays is next game on Saturday (December 5), again starting at 12 PM local time (5 AM Dutch time).
The team then meets the Chinese Taipei National Training Team.
(December 4)
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