By Bob Fromer
Plant City, Florida: 20 November -- Day Two at the WBSC Co-ed Slowpitch World Cup on Friday was not, on the whole, a good day for the GB Slowpitch Team.
GB was out-muscled and out-hustled in a 13-10 loss to Curacao in the morning, rode their luck to come from behind and win a 9-7 nail-biter against the Bahamas at noon, and then were taken apart in the afternoon, 17-5, by Germany.
Friday’s results leave GB on the verge of missing out on Sunday’s Trophy Page Playoffs, as the table below shows. GB may need to win both of their final round-robin games on Saturday – against Bulgaria and Canada – to be sure of meaningful games on Sunday.
Standings after Day Two are:
Bahamas (4-1)
Canada (4-1)
Germany (4-1)
Curacao (3-2)
GB (3-2)
Turks & Caicos Islands (2-3)
France (0-5)
Bulgaria (0-5)
Anything could happen
However, the upper half of the standings could change dramatically on Saturday, as many of the leading teams will play each other on the final day of round-robin play.
Germany will play Canada and Curacao, the Bahamas will play Curacao and the Turks & Caicos Islands, Canada will play Germany and GB, Curacao will play the Bahamas and Germany, and GB will play Canada and will hope to add an easier victory against winless Bulgaria.
With no American team in the competition, the 2015 Slowpitch World Cup is turning out to be a close-run affair between five and maybe six of the eight teams competing, and forecasting a winner at this point would be unwise.
But if the GB Slowpitch Team is going to have any chance of being the team that takes home the gold medal, they will need to play a lot better – especially on defense – than they did today.
GB committed 16 errors in their three games on Friday, 13 of them in the losses to Curacao and Germany -- and they were out-hit in those losses by 32-18. In European Championships, with a stronger squad than they have here, GB is used to bullying opponents with power, and by making them chase GB runners taking opportunist extra bases.
Here, the GB Team has been on the receiving end of that treatment.
GB v Curacao
It took a while before signs of serious trouble emerged in this morning’s game against Curacao.
True, Curacao did put up a 4-0 lead in the top of the first inning as their first three male hitters, including Thursday’s Home Run Derby winner Richene Martina, all blasted long triples to the outfield fence off GB starter David Lee.
But GB came right back with four runs of their own in the bottom of the first to tie the score on only two hits, plus a walk and two Curacao errors. The key blow was a double over the centre fielder’s head by Claudine Snape.
When Curacao failed to score in the top of the second inning and GB added four more runs in the bottom of the frame, it looked like normal service was being resumed. Successive walks to Michelle Collier and Roger Grooms got the inning started, putting runners on second and third, and GB Head Coach Steve Patterson, a master at using his bench to good effect, sent up Kirstie Leach to pinch-hit for Steph Gillard, and Kirstie delivered a two-run double. Another double by Claudine Snape and an infield grounder brought in two more runs and gave GB an 8-4 lead.
But the game got away from GB in the top of the third inning as Curacao scored seven runs. Levi Carolus and Stefanie Emerenciana led off the inning with singles and then Richene Martina drove the ball deep over the fence in left centre field to cut GB’s lead to 8-7.
Then things got worse. Two of the next three batters reached on infield errors before Jucendy Pieter hit another long blast over the same fence, and Curacao led 10-8. Finally, a double and an error in the outfield let Zair Roeiman come all the way around the bases, and Curacao had a three-run lead.
For GB, who had only seven hits over the five-inning game, there was no way back – especially after Curacao added three more runs in the top of the fifth inning, two of them on a dropped catch in the outfield followed by Jucendy Pieter’s second home run of the game.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, trailing by five, GB put up some resistance. Chris Yoxall led off the inning with a solo home run over the fence in left field, and Danielle Atkinson’s grounder drove in Roddy Hill to make the score 13-10. But that was how it ended.
GB v Bahamas
GB had probably assumed that they would win against Curacao; now that they had lost, it was essential to bounce back against the hitherto undefeated Bahamas.
And with a little luck and a little help from their Caribbean friends, GB managed to do just that in a tense and well-played game that could easily have gone the other way.
After the game was over, pitcher Roger Grooms went to left fielder Mike MacDowell and said, “You won the game for us.” And it was hard to argue. Mike had 10 putouts in left field, some of them difficult and two of them quite spectacular, including a diving catch in the seventh inning when GB was trying to preserve a narrow lead.
And just for good measure, Mike went three-for-four in the game, with a double, a triple and then a two-out pop fly double into short right-centre field in the bottom of the sixth inning that finally broke the game open as GB went from 5-4 down to 9-5 ahead.
Unlike most of the games in the World Cup so far, this one was well-played and low scoring, at least through five-and-a-half innings. Roger Grooms for GB and Mary Ann Ferguson for the Bahamas kept opposing hitters off balance and were deadly in locating difficult pitches on two-strike counts. As a result, runs were hard to come by.
Each team scored once in the first inning.
GB took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the third on a triple by Mike MacDowell that the left fielder lost in the sun and a single by Chris Yoxall.
The Bahamas tied the score at 2-2 in the top of the fourth inning.
GB took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the fourth on Roddy Hill’s single, an error and a sacrifice fly by Annie Dubovec.
The Bahamas took a 4-3 lead in the top of the fifth inning when Jamal Scavella blasted the first pitch of his at-bat over the fence in left centre field with Karen Darville on base.
GB tied the score at 4-4 in the bottom of the fifth when Stewart Butcher singled and later scored on an error.
In the top of the sixth inning, left-handed slugger Eugene Bain crushed a pitch over the wall in right field, gave his patented bat flip a la Jose Bautista of the Blue Jays, and also gave the Bahamas a 5-4 lead.
GB tried the score in the bottom of the sixth when Roddy Hill walked and scored on a two-out pinch-hit single by David Lee, as Steve Patterson again used his bench to great effect. Lauren Futcher, another pinch hitter, singled to keep the inning alive, but then GB had a huge stroke of luck.
Stewart Butcher grounded to second base, Karen Darville made a perfect flip to shortstop Sherman Ferguson for the inning-ending force out – and Ferguson, inexplicably, bobbled and then dropped the ball.
Roger Grooms (re-entering to pinch run for David Lee) scored on the play to give GB a 6-5 lead, and then Kirstie Leach singled, Mike MacDowell drove in two more with his bloop double and Claudine Snape’s sharp single to left drove in a final run.
Instead of the game being tied and still in the balance, GB now had a four-run edge. And they would need almost all of those runs.
The Bahamas had one shot left, in the top of the seventh inning, and they came close. Sherman Ferguson singled to right field to lead off the inning, and Mary Sweeting would also have had a base hit if Mike MacDowell hadn’t snagged her low line drive with a diving catch in left field. That meant the Bahamas only scored two runs rather than three when Raynaldo Russell belted a long home run over the right centre field fence.
That made it 9-7 to GB, and Jamal Scavella reached base later in the inning with a single. But sandwiched around that single were two fly balls to – who else? – Mike MacDowell in left field, and the second one, off the bat of Anotina Simmons, ended the game.
GB v Germany
Having shown character and determination in coming back against the Bahamas, GB promptly reverted to sloppy defense and toothless offense in the day's final game against Germany and suffered one of the worst defeats in GB Slowpitch history, going down 17-5.
After a scoreless first inning, Germany scored nine runs in the top of the second on eight hits off starter Roger Grooms and three crucial GB infield errors that kept the inning going ... and going ... and that was pretty much that.
GB pecked away with single runs in the second and third innings and two in the fifth, while reliever David Lee held Germany to just a single run through the third, fourth and fifth frames. A comeback just might have been on the cards.
But in the top of the sixth inning, Germany put up seven more runs on five hits and two more errors, and the rest, as the Americans say, was "garbage time".
Shortstop Max Zerhusen was unstoppable for Germany, with two doubles, a triple, a home run and six RBIs, while Wolfgang Walther had three hits and pitcher Karim Abu-Omar had four.
Just to finish off the day on a high and then a low, GB had a lead-off home run from Kelvin Harrison in the bottom of the sixth and final inning, but then had runners thrown out at both third and home on perfectly-executed relays by the Germans.
But tomorrow is another day, and if the first two days of the Slowpitch World Cup have shown us anything, it's that any team in the competition -- except perhaps for Bulgaria and France -- can beat anyone else.
Results
Here are the results after two days of pool play with one left to go:
FRIDAY RESULTS
Canada 12, Bulgaria 7
Bahamas 15, France 5
Curacao 13, GB 10
Germany 17, Turks & Caicos Islands 6
Canada 20, France 0
GB 9, Bahamas 7
Germany 13, Bulgaria 5
Turks & Caicos Islands 7, Curacao 5
Turks & Caicos Islands 19, Bulgaria 12
Germany 17, GB 5
Curacao 12, France 3
Bahamas 7, Canada 6
THURSDAY RESULTS
Bahamas 17, Bulgaria 2
Canada 12, Curacao 11
Germany 38, France 3
GB 19, Turks & Caicos Islands 5
Curacao 12, Bulgaria 9
Bahamas 12, Germany 11
Canada 16, Turks and Caicos Islands 8
GB 29, France 1
Fighting the rain
Because rain is forecast to begin on Saturday afternoon and continue for 24 hours, the tournament organisers have brought Saturday's final round-robin games forward by three hours, from a noon to a 9.00 am start.
There is also a possibility that some Page Playoff games, currently scheduled for Sunday, could be brought forward to Saturday afternoon if the rain has not yet arrived. Page Playoff finals are scheduled for 3.00 pm on Sunday, but could well wind up being played under the lights on Sunday evening if forecasts are accurate.
Photos by Ian Tomlin