By Bob Fromer
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Clearwater, Florida, USA: 24 July – The GB Under-19 Women’s Fastpitch Team got their Junior World Championship campaign off to a great start this morning with a 1-0 win over Korea, but came crashing down to earth this evening with a 7-1 loss to China.
In the unforgiving format the World Baseball Softball Confederation has chosen to employ in this tournament, where only two teams out of six or seven in the four first-round pool groups will go through to Championship playoffs, the GB Team will probably now have to win all its remaining pool games against Ireland, Canada and Mexico to reach the playoffs, and that will be a tough assignment.
This morning, GB scored just one run against Korea, and should have scored more, but pitcher Georgina Corrick made that run stand up for a GB win.
This evening, GB scored just one run against China and should have scored more, but held a 1-0 lead until the bottom of the fourth inning behind the pitching of Beth Fleming.
But in the fourth and fifth innings, the GB defense, which had been so good up to this point, suddenly cracked. Four errors were committed in those two innings, and in those circumstances, a team like China needs no further invitation to pile on the pressure.
By the time those two innings were over, China had a 7-1 lead and the game, and GB had their backs to the wall in terms of their goal coming into the tournament, which was to reach the Championship playoffs and finish in the top eight.
Looking ahead
Having started the Junior World Championship with two games on Opening Day, the GB Team will now have just one game a day during the remainder of the first round.
Tomorrow (Tuesday), GB will play Ireland at 4.00 pm Florida time (9.00 pm in the UK), and will then play Canada at 6.00 pm Florida time (11.00 pm in the UK) on Wednesday and Mexico at 4.30 pm Florida time (9.30 pm in the UK) on Thursday.
China also played two games today and won both of them, posting a 12-1 win over Ireland in addition to their win against GB, so they have an early lead in Pool D. Elsewhere in Pool D, Canada won a 2-1 thriller against Mexico and sits in second place, while GB is third at 1-1 and three winless teams – Mexico, Korea and Ireland – are fourth, fifth and sixth. But all that will change tomorrow.
Here are the details of the two games GB played today, starting with the evening game against China and then the morning game against Korea.
GB v China
With Georgina Corrick having pitched all seven innings in GB’s win over Korea in the morning, Beth Fleming got the start against China, traditionally one of the top five teams in the world, but present at this Junior World Championship with a squad consisting, amazingly, of only 10 players – two pitchers and eight position players.
What will happen to China should they get a couple of injuries is anyone’s guess.
Nervous start
Beth Fleming has only joined the GB programme this year, and was undoubtedly nervous in her first start against a top-ranked team.
So after GB went up and down in order in the top of the first inning against Chinese starter Wang Xin Yu, Beth gave up a lead-off single in the bottom of the inning to Sang Yu Juan, and quickly wild-pitched her to second and then to third.
After which, Beth proceeded to strike out the next three Chinese hitters and get out of the inning without conceding a run!
GB pressure
Over the next two innings, it was GB applying the pressure, and they took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second with some help from their opponents.
A walk to Megan Parno began the inning, and though she was eventually thrown out at the plate, the Chinese committed two throwing errors during the frame and eventually it was Casey Moritz who scored on a ground ball by Lauren King. At that point, GB still had runners on second and third with just one out, and a base hit would have put the British in a very strong position.
But Kyra Watson and Alana Snow both looked at called third strikes on pitches that shaved the outside corner, and the chance to put the Chinese under real pressure had gone.
GB left another two runners on base in the top of the third inning after a single by Katie Burge and a walk to Megan Parno and another chance – GB’s last before the game turned – came in the top of the fourth inning.
Georgina Corrick led off with a long double to the right centre field gap, Kyra Watson’s infield single moved Georgina to third and a walk to Hannah Burge loaded the bases. But by this time there were two out, and Katie Burge, fooled on a change-up, could only ground the ball back to pitcher Wang Xin Yu as GB left the bases full of runners.
All change
Beth Fleming had held the Chinese scoreless through the first three innings, and had been pitching with increasing confidence. But in the bottom of the fourth inning, after the GB offense had spurned all those chances, everything suddenly turned, and it was the GB defense that allowed the Chinese to take over the game.
Xie Jia Xin rapped a sharp single to centre to open the bottom of the fourth. The next batter, Wang Men Ru, put down a sacrifice bunt that Beth picked up cleanly but fired way over the head of first base player Kyra Watson and down the right field line. Xie Jia Xin came all the way around to score and the game was tied. But more importantly, the Force was now entirely with the Chinese.
Georgina Corrick came in to pitch at that point, but before the bottom of the fourth inning was over, another error, some bunts, some stolen bases and a couple of base hits tightened the screw and produced a total of four Chinese runs.
The bottom of the fifth inning was more of the same: two infield errors to open the inning, then a couple of base hits, and three more runs crossed the plate. To all intents and purposes, the game was over.
Meanwhile, China had brought their only other player and pitcher, Jin Xiao Fan, into the game at the start of the fifth inning, and she set the GB offense down over the last three frames at the cost of just one base hit, to Lauren King, and a walk to Katie Burge.
The game ended in the top of the seventh inning with the Chinese defense turning a slick 6-4-3 double play.
GB v Korea
The story of GB’s first game of the day was a much happier one.
Georgina Corrick pitched a five-hit shutout against a tough Korean team and drove in the only run of the game as the GB Under-19 Women got the Junior World Championship off to a successful start with a tense 1-0 win.
With a bunch of tough games still to come in Pool D, this win was essential to GB’s hopes of being one of only two teams that will advance from the six-team group to the Championship playoffs.
Baserunners
The Koreans had a number of baserunners over the first four innings, but the threat then lessened as Georgina Corrick retired the last 11 batters she faced and the GB defense played errorless softball behind her.
Georgina struck out 11 Koreans, hit one batter, but did not issue a walk in a controlled and intelligent performance, making clutch pitches when necessary to escape those early threats.
GB, by contrast, had seven hits to go with two walks and two hit batters, and had baserunners in every inning against righthander Si Yeon Hong, who pitched the first two innings for Korea, and Hyeon Seon Hong, who pitched the last four.
But some hesitation and mistakes on the bases, and a recurring failure to put down sacrifice bunts when needed, kept GB from adding to the single run they scored in the bottom of the third inning, and kept the game on more of a knife-edge than perhaps it needed to be.
GB had some help in scoring that run, as the only Korean error of the game allowed Georgina Corrick to come to bat with runners on first and second and one out, and her fly ball double down the left field line drove in Megan Parno with what proved to be the game-winner.
Tough start
Both teams left the bases loaded without scoring in the first inning, which suggested there might be more runs in the game than proved to be the case.
For Korea, lead-off hitter Hye Won Jeong pushed a two-strike single into short left field in the top of the first inning and Ah Young Kim followed with a bunt single down the third base line. Georgina Corrick got the next two batters on a strikeout and an infield pop-up, keeping the runners at first and second, but then hit Ji Soo Park to load the bases before striking out Ye Bin Kim on three pitches.
Then it was GB’s turn to threaten. Left fielder Hannah Burge beat out a ground ball down the first base line to lead off the bottom of the first inning, but was still at first after her sister Katie fouled out and Andrea Johnson struck out. However, Megan Parno drove a single to right centre field, sending Hannah to third and Megan took second on the throw. Casey Moritz then walked to fill the bases, and one of the pitches was a wild pitch that skipped past Korean catcher Ye Bin Kim, but Hannah stayed at third base.
Georgina Corrick now had her first opportunity to drive in some runs -- but swung at the first pitch she saw and grounded out to third.
Breakthrough
The breakthrough for GB came in the bottom of the third inning.
Andrea Johnson led off and was hit by a pitch from Hyeon Seon Hong, who had just entered the game. Andrea was forced at second on Megan Parno’s ground ball to third base, but when Casey Moritz hit a ground ball to first, the throw to second for an attempted force play was off the mark, and GB had two runners on.
That brought up Georgina Corrick, who made no mistake on this occasion with her RBI double and GB had a 1-0 lead. But GB then ran themselves out of what could have been a bigger inning when more hesitant baserunning allowed Korea to turn Lauren King’s little ground ball down the first base line into an out at first and then an out at the plate.
Korea might have responded immediately, when Seo Young Jeong slashed a one-out triple into the right field corner in the top of the fourth inning. But Georgina Corrick got the next two hitters on a pop fly and a grounder to third base, leaving Jeong stranded, and the Koreans never had another baserunner.
GB passed up another good scoring chance in the bottom of the fifth inning, when Andrea Johnson, leading off, smashed a line drive double to the fence in left centre field. But Andrea went a little too far around second base, then slipped, and the Koreans tagged her out trying to get back to the base.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, Lauren King lined a single to left field and Alana Snow poked an infield single off the glove of third base player Kyung Min Lee to give GB two more baserunners with two out. But pitcher Hyeon Seon Hong turned and just managed to snare a little pop fly that Hannah Burge hit over her head for the third out.
Good win
It was an excellent win to start off with, and the GB defense continued to look sharp, as it had in the couple of scrimmage games that the team had been able to play between thunderstorms over the past four days.
But that was to change in the later game against China, and GB players, who would ideally have wanted more games to prepare for this tournament, will also need to get sharper with their bunting and baserunning if they want to retain any chance of reaching the playoffs.
Elsewhere….
Early games on the first day of the World Championship went mostly to form, but there were a couple of surprises and near-misses.
In the first game of the day, Peru took a wholly unexpected 5-0 lead against Australia in the third inning before being dragged back and eventually going down 12-5 in five innings.
The Philippines, who had beaten GB 2-0 in an abbreviated scrimmage game last Friday, put up a 10-3 six-inning win over Italy, who were runner-up to the GB U-19s in last summer’s European Junior Championship. Later in the day, however, the Philippines went down 13-0 to Chinese Taipei.
The Netherlands, surprisingly, lost twice on Opening Day, 4-3 to Brazil and 3-0 to Australia, which will make it tough for the Dutch to get to the Championship Playoffs from Pool B.
In Pool C, however, the Czech Republic, with wins over India and Argentina, are currently leading the European charge.
Other two-game winners on the day were the United States, Japan, Australia and Chinese Taipei.
Photos by Simon Mortimer