By Lee Grafton
Most, Czech Republic: 14 July – The GB Junior (Under-19) Men’s Fastpitch Team opened the European Junior Championships yesterday afternoon against Poland, a team they might well have beaten. But GB couldn’t maintain a lead and eventually lost on the mercy rule, 21-9.
Poland had only five hits in the game and GB had four (two each by Damon Brown and Amit Aswani). Each team played well defensively and only committed a single error.
But the story of the game was the wildness of the pitching. Polish starter Marek Bebyn and reliever Kamil Stajer gave up 13 walks to GB hitters. But GB starter Damon Brown and reliever Josh Saunder gave the Poles 16 bases on balls and hit eight Polish batters into the bargain, and a lot of that happened in the fifth inning when Poland overturned a 9-7 GB lead and scored 14 runs to take the game away from the British team.
GB went down in order in the bottom of the fifth, and that was the ball game.
From here on, the opposition will get tougher. GB will play Denmark today, Israel and the Czech Republic on Wednesday and Croatia on Thursday, with the top four teams making the Page Playoffs that begin on Friday. Teams that finish fifth and sixth in the round-robin will play a single game for fifth place on Saturday.
Early lead
GB, as the home team, came out of the first inning with a 3-2 lead.
Poland scored a couple of runs in the top of the first inning on passed balls and walks, but when George Young led off for GB in the bottom of the inning, it was clear that Polish starter Marek Bebyn would also struggle to find the strike zone as he bounced and rolled balls across the plate.
Eventually, GB loaded the bases with two out, and Amit Aswani hit a long drive to centre field that eluded the dive of the Polish centre fielder and wound up as a three-RBI triple. But Amit was caught trying to steal home to end the inning.
GB starter Damon Brown was being picked up by the umpires for stepping off the rubber during his delivery as the second inning started, and walks were still being issued, along with passed balls and stolen bases. Rob Mosley made two excellent catches in centre field for GB, but Poland scored one run on a sacrifice fly and two more on a line drive down the left field line to take a 5-3 lead. It might have been more, but inning ended on an excellent basket catch in short right field by second baseman Robbie Studholm.
In the bottom of the second inning, Ben Tomlin walked in his first at-bat for GB, and eventually scored on a single to centre by Damon Brown. Although Marek Bebyn continued to roll pitches along the floor until he eventually slowed down his velocity and found the plate, GB could only score the one run and trailed 5-4 after two frames had been played.
GB on top
GB escaped with only one run scored against them in both the third and fourth innings, stretching Poland’s advantage to 7-4, but in the bottom of the fourth, GB regained the lead.
It came about because GB hitters started to show some patience with the poor Polish pitching. Three walks in a row loaded the bases to open the inning, and after a fly out to left field, two more walks gave GB two runs before Poland changed their pitcher.
A base hit for Amit Aswani off reliever Kamil Stajer then scored two more runs and gave Amit five RBIs for the game, and as the ball was thrown back to the pitcher, Josh Saunders stole home to put GB 9-7 up at the end of the inning.
That, however, was as good as it was going to get.
Big inning
A series of walks and hit batters for the Polish team in the top of the fifth put them ahead by 14-9 before Josh Saunders took over the pitching from Damon Brown. And still GB was unable to get the outs.
An extremely patient team, the Polish batters took their walks and hit-by-pitches, and the score ran out to 17-9, at which point Damon Brown resumed the pitching. But by the time Damon secured the final out, but the damage was more than done, with GB down 21-9.
After three quick outs in the bottom of the fifth, the mercy rule came into effect.
We have all had one of those innings where it seems impossible to get the outs. Unfortunately for the GB Juniors, it happened against a team they had the opportunity to beat. Once the Polish team stopped swinging at balls and made GB pitch to them, GB started to struggle.
Perhaps, with the same patience, GB would have had a similar inning, as the Polish pitchers were not throwing anything the team had not faced in the Great Britain Fastpitch League.
But this will be a learning experience for all the players to take into the next game.
Other games
The two other games played on the tournament's Opening Day were both one-run thrillers.
Croatia beat Israel 1-0, and Denmark beat the Czech Republic 6-5 with a six-run outburst in the top of the fifth inning.
Photos by Jan Grafton