(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
  Team Europe ends up losing in second game Asia Winter Baseball League
Nederlands
 TAICHUNG (Taiwan) -
On Sunday (November 29), Team Europe lost its second game in the Asia Winter Baseball League with a 5-1 score to the Chinese Taipei National Training Team.
For the Taiwanese team, which is a strong squad, this was its first team in the league, as it had no game scheduled on Saturday.
The European squad, led by Italian Gilberto Gerali, opened its first-ever participatian in this competition on Saturday with a 9-9 tie against the KBO Team from South Korea.
In the opener, the European team made some crucial defensive errors, which in the end led to the tie score.
Today, the team played much better and committed only two errors.
For today's game, Gerali had made some changes in his starting line-up.
That included Daniel Fernandes starting in centerfield and Rashid Gerard being the third third baseman.
Kevin Weijgerste returned to first base.
In the first part of the game, the two teams were up to each other.
In the fourth inning, Europe took an 1-0 lead.
Kevin Weijgertse singled, moved on a grounder, then scored on a line drive double by German catcher Chris Howard wtih runners on second and third base.
However, in the bottom of the fourth inning, the Taiwanese squad rallied for four runs off of Dutch starter Maickel Rietel, then added a run in the fifth to make it a 5-1 score.
Following Rietel on the mound were Leonel Cespedes (France), Kruno Gojkovic (Croatia), Bryan Sheldon (Italy) and Daniel Thieben (Germany).
The European pitchers gave up eight baseshits.
Three of them (all doubles) were hit by team-captain Tai-Chun Yang, one of the players on the squad who also is a regular in the National Team of Taiwan.
Starting for the Taiwanese team was 19-year old Yen-Ching Lu, who also pitched for his country on the recent Premier12.
He gave up two hits and struckout three batters in the three innings he pitched.
After the game, Team Europe Manager Gilberto Gerali stated that ''while losing the game, this was a positive encouragement for the team''.
In the second game today, the match-up between the Taiwan Beer CPBL Team and the KBO Team ended in a 6-6 tie.
In this game, for the first time a video challenge was used with the call on the field being reversed.
With the score of this game, it means that three of the four games played so far have now ended in a tie.
Team Europe will play its next game on Monday (November 30), starting at 6 PM local time (11 AM Dutch time) at Douliu City.
The team then meets the NPB Team, which is compiled of professional talents from the Japan.
(November 29)
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