By Bob Fromer
Plant City, Florida, USA: 19 November – With their backs to the wall and facing elimination from the medals at the 2016 Slowpitch World Cup on Saturday evening, the GB Slowpitch Team produced their best performance of the tournament to carve out a crucial 17-8 win over Germany.
The win, in the 3 v 4 Page Playoff game, guaranteed GB a medal, kept them in with a chance of winning the tournament, and most importantly gave them meaningful games to play on Sunday. All that the Germans have to look forward to now is a game with Bulgaria at 11.00 on Sunday morning that will determine which team winds up in fourth place.
After that, at 1.00 pm Florida time, GB will play Curacao, their bogey team in this tournament, with the loser finishing with the bronze medal and the winner advancing to the final against the Bahamas at 3.00 pm. The Bahamas gained a place in the final when they defeated Curacao 23-15 in the 1 v 2 Page Playoff game, the last game played on Saturday evening.
But before we look in more detail at that crucial win over Germany – a performance that Head Coach Stephen Patterson said afterwards would make any coach proud – we need to look back and see how GB wound up in a position where they had to fight for their playoff lives.
Finishing the round-robin
There were two more round-robin games for all six teams to play on Saturday morning to determine placings that would carry over into the playoffs.
GB had struggled to achieve a 3-1 record after Day 1, but played much better softball on Day 2, winning three more games and losing by only by a single run to Curacao. After two days of play, GB and the Bahamas topped the pool with 6-2 records, but GB had a clear advantage because they had beaten the Bahamas twice.
GB v Turks & Caicos Islands
So the GB Team roared into Saturday’s final round-robin games with confidence and momentum, and the unfortunate victim was the Turks & Caicos Islands, who wound up on the receiving end of a 26-0 four-inning massacre. Roger Grooms and Matt Tomlin combined to hold the Islanders to just three hits over four innings, while GB were scoring seven runs in the first inning, five in the second and 14 more runs in a third inning that would have seemed endless to a battered Turks & Caicos team that struggled to move in the field. Eight games in two days had clearly taken a toll.
GB pounded out 24 hits, and pretty much everyone in the squad got in on the act.
GB v Bulgaria
Then came GB’s final round-robin game, against Bulgaria, and it proved to be a complete contrast.
The Bulgarians – in reality a handful of Bulgarians and a number of Americans – had won only one two games to that point, but they played GB very tough.
A large American named John Mitchel boomed a two-run home run over the left centre field fence in the top of the first inning off a startled Roger Grooms to put Bulgaria in the lead.
But GB scored six runs in the bottom of the first inning, thanks largely to the fact that Bulgarian pitcher Youri Alkalay couldn’t find the plate and gave up six consecutive walks (three of them were automatic walks to women because two were out when he walked the men). Singles by David Grey and Hannah Pitman followed, and GB were off and running.
But Bulgaria refused to fold, Youri Alkalay’s pitching improved, GB batters started majoring on hitting catchable fly balls (12 out of 15 outs were in the air), and after the Bulgarians had batted in the top of the fifth inning, the score was 9-9. An embarrassing defeat looked eminently possible.
Fortunately, however, GB bats woke up in the bottom of the fifth, and consecutive singles to open the inning by Kirstie Leach and two pinch-hitters – David Lee and Danielle Atkinson – set the stage for four runs and a 13-9 GB lead. A two-run double by Kelvin Harrison was the key blow.
The Bulgarians went meekly down in order in the top of the sixth inning, and GB went into the playoffs as the #1 seed.
Scores and standings
Final round-robin scores on Saturday were:
Bahamas 19, Bulgaria 10
Curacao 15, Turks & Caicos Islands 8
Bahamas 13, Germany 6
GB 26, Turks & Caicos Islands 0
Germany 22, Curacao 6
GB 13, Bulgaria 9
And the final round-robin standings were:
GB (8-2)
Bahamas (8-2)
Curacao (6-3)
Germany (5-5)
Bulgaria (2-8)
Turks & Caicos Islands (1-9)
Into the playoffs
The rather peculiar playoff schedule in this tournament now dictated that #1 GB would play #3 Curacao, following by #2 Bahamas playing #4 Germany and that these games would decide seedings for the Page Playoff -- which rather negated most of the round-robin results and the 30 games it had taken to achieve them. But never mind.
Before we got to the playoffs, GB Assistant Coach David Lee had said that Curacao was the team he preferred to play, which falls into the category of “be careful what you wish for”.
Because GB did play Curacao, and it didn’t turn out well.
GB v Curacao
GB had already played Curacao twice. In their opening game of the tournament on Thursday, GB had won fairly easily, by 19-9. On Friday, however, Curacao had come from behind with four runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to edge GB 10-9.
Curacao is the team that has kept pulling out surprising wins throughout the tournament. On first glance, they don’t look all that good – but they have male batters who can drive the ball out of the ballpark, their male outfielders are fast and have great arms, their pitching is adequate, and their women hit enough to keep rallies going. In short, a dangerous team.
And the game started out with an eerie resemblance to the game GB had just struggled through against Bulgaria. In the top of the first inning, Curacao’s Ulrich Snyders blasted a home run over the left centre field fence to give Curacao an early lead. But GB came right back with four runs in the bottom of the inning – Roger Grooms drove in the last two with a double -- and everything seemed under control.
But it wasn’t.
That was largely because the GB offense simply dried up after the first inning and managed just a single run over the next five frames. In slowpitch softball, five runs in six innings is not going to get it done.
GB played well on defense, with Matt Tomlin making some run-saving plays at second base, Danielle Atkinson pulling off a fine third-to-first double play and Mike MacDowell making a diving catch in left field. But Curacao scored a few runs here and a few runs there and emerged with a 10-5 win.
And that put GB just where they didn’t want to be – in the 3 v 4 Page Playoff game, where a loss would mean that their tournament was essentially over.
Not long after, GB learned that their opponent in that all-important game would be Germany, who had lost 12-10 to the Bahamas. The difference in that game was grand slam home runs in consecutive innings by the Bahamas’ Sherman Ferguson, and the second one was an awe-inspiring line drive that was still rising when it cleared the fence.
Germany and GB had split a pair of games during the round-robin, so this was going to be a very crucial decider.
GB v Germany
Stephen Patterson had a chat with the GB Team after the loss to Curacao, and they talked about the need for more consistent hitting. But the real question was how this GB Team would react to the pressure of a game with so much at stake.
Afterwards, Stephen Patterson called the GB performance “electric”, and it wasn’t just the performance on the field. Throughout the game, the players in the GB dugout kept up loud and constant support for their teammates, and it felt at times that the team was on a mission.
But Germany is a very good side, and the game was never going to be easy. An intense first inning set the tone, an inning in which GB won the battle of the bloop base hits.
In the top of the first inning, Germany had the benefit of a GB error, a couple of solid singles and two lazy fly balls that fell just out of the reach of GB fielders. The fact that the Germans only scored two runs from all this was mainly due to two major mistakes on the bases. Tatiana Jung left third base early attempting to score on a sacrifice fly, and Mario Beuchert was thrown out at second base trying to stretch a single to a double.
Relieved that the top of the first inning hadn’t been much worse, GB came to bat in the bottom of the frame. A Mike MacDowell lead-off single and an error at third base on Kirstie Leach’s ground ball gave GB two quick baserunners and brought Chris Yoxall to the plate. Chris took a mighty swing and sent up a towering pop fly behind second base. Shortstop Max Zerhusen and second baseman Wolfgang Walther both circled under it, but the ball somehow fell between them and GB had the bases loaded with no one out. A sacrifice fly from Danielle Atkinson, a line drive double to right centre field by Jeff Swindell and a single by Kelvin Harrison brought four runs home and gave GB a 4-2 lead.
It was a lead they were never to lose, though Germany did tie the score at 4-4 when Max Zerhusen cleared the fence with a two-run shot in the top of the second inning.
But the hallmark of the GB offense in this game was consistency, and they simply never stopped scoring. After regaining the lead with two runs in the bottom of the second inning, GB added four in the third, three in the fourth and four more in the fifth.
Chris Yoxall led the way with four hits, Mike MacDowell had three, Annie Dubovec had a pair of doubles and everyone else chipped in. Poor Danielle Atkinson hit the ball hard in all four at-bats, and every one went straight to a German fielder.
And possibly the hardest-hit ball of the night was a vicious line drive that Roger Grooms pulled foul down the third base line in the bottom of the fourth inning, a shot that felled Kat Golik, who was a baserunner at third. Fortunately, the ball hit Kat in the shoulder and she was not only able to continue, but contributed a sharp base hit in GB’s fifth inning rally.
Germany simply couldn’t match this offensive production, and GB steadily pulled away.
The Germans had a reasonable number of baserunners, but shortstop Jeff Swindell and second baseman Chris Yoxall pulled off two stylish double plays, and GB also successfully executed a rundown that helped keep Germany off the scoreboard. The final score was 17-8.
“That was about as well as we could have played,” David Lee said after the game, and it was a great team response in a pressure situation.
The challenge tomorrow – against Curacao and then, hopefully, against the Bahamas in the final --will be different. These are teams with home run hitters throughout their line-ups, and the first trick will be to contain them. Or outscore them.
GB has beaten the Bahamas by one run and then by 14, and GB has beaten Curacao by nine runs, then lost to them by one and five. The Bahamas has beaten Curacao twice, once by a little and once by a lot. Clearly, any one of these three teams can win the tournament.
A GB Team – one of two that entered – won the very first Slowpitch World Cup in 2002. The tournament was played again in 2005, and resumed in 2014 on an annual basis. But GB has not managed to add to that first title.
Will tomorrow be the time?
Playoff scores
Scores from Saturday’s playoff games were:
#1 v #3:
Curacao 10, GB 5
#2 v #4
Bahamas 12, Germany 10
3 v 4 Page Playoff Game:
GB 17, Germany 8
1 v 2 Page Playoff Game:
Bahamas 23, Curacao 15
Fifth Place Game:
Bulgaria 24, Turks & Caicos Islands 10
Photos by Pete Saunders