By Lee Grafton
Most, Czech Republic: 15 July – The GB Junior (Under-19) Men’s Fastpitch Team played their second game of the European Junior Championships against Denmark yesterday, and held an early lead before finally going down on the mercy rule by 11-4 in five innings.
It was a fine achievement for the GB Under-19s to hold the powerful Danish team close until the final inning and provide them with real competition.
GB actually out-hit the Danes, 11 to six, and the GB team looked far more aggressive than in their opening game against Poland, stealing bases and advancing runners. But the Danes were able to take advantage of a number of walks plus a couple of big hits to drive enough runs home to pull away and win the game.
Early lead
The batting started slowly for both sides, with Denmark scoring the only run through the first two innings on a hit-by-pitch, a walk and two wild pitches.
In the second inning, a long running catch by Josh Saunders in centre field prevented Denmark increasing their lead.
Then, in the top of the third, GB started to get on base, playing small ball and rattling the Danes with bunts and slap hitting. GB scored three runs on a succession of infield and bunt singles by Jack Nielan, George Young, Trent Nash, Josh Saunders and Amit Aswani, plus two uncharacteristic throwing errors from Denmark.
But the lead didn’t last very long. In the bottom of third inning, Denmark’s Anton Brown hit a long home run over the right centre field fence to score three runs, and a fourth run came in on a walk, a stolen base, a wild pitch and a passed ball as Denmark re-took the lead at 5-3.
GB closed the gap to 5-4 in the top of the fourth on singles by Rob Studholme and Damon Brown and yet another Danish error, and singles by Amit Aswani and Sam Grafton in the fifth inning (in Sam’s first at-bat of the tournament) set up another British threat that ended on a pop-up to second base.
But Denmark’s experience had started to show, as they walked and stole bases to add one run in the bottom of the fourth inning and then five in the bottom of the fifth, although they only recorded two hits in that inning, by Jasper Johansen and Duncan Svane Milne. That brought the score to 11-4 and the mercy rule came into effect. But it hadn’t felt like a mercy rule game.
Good performance
In general, it was a much better performance from the GB Junior Men against one of the strongest teams in the competition, with all but one player in the GB line-up getting at least one hit and the pitching of Damon Brown and Kai Benaim holding the Danish offense to just six hits. Now GB will be looking to put some wins on the board during the rest of the tournament.
The team will go into today’s doubleheader in good spirits. At 12:30 pm they will play the hugely improved Israeli team, and then, at 6.00 pm, will play the Czechs – possibly the toughest test they will face all week.
In other games on Tuesday, Israel beat Poland 13-11 but then went on to lose 7-0 against the Czech Republic, and Denmark beat Croatia 7-0.
The early standings, after two days of play, look like this:
Denmark (3-0)
Czech Republic (1-1)
Croatia (1-1)
Poland (1-1)
Israel (1-2)
GB (0-2)
Photos by Jan Grafton