by Bob Fromer
Haarlem, Netherlands -- Heavy rain washed out a whole day's play on Friday 22 August at the ISF Women's Fastpitch World Championships, and delayed the start of games on Saturday until after 2.00 pm. So eight exciting Championship Playoff games had to be crammed into the next ten hours or so, and when the last of them ended, sometimes after midnight, Japan had reached Sunday's final, and either Australia or the USA will join them.
The long and frustrating rain delays also resulted in total cancellation of the Consolation Playoff round, and so Great Britain and seven other countries lost the chance to play more games to determine their final position in the rankings. Instead, these players had to sit around and watch the rain on Friday, but then got to sit and watch some great softball played by the top eight teams on Saturday.
Joining the audience on Saturday were five players from BUSK's High Performance Softball Academy, who flew in to the Netherlands on Thursday. While they only got to watch one game played by the GB Women, on Thursday afternoon, the softball they were able to watch on Saturday will have been a wonderful example of what it takes to win -- and lose -- at the very top level of the sport.
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Ueno ascendant
Japan are the reigning World Champions and were the last Olympic Champions, and one of the main reasons why has been the pitching of Yukiko Ueno. On Saturday, Ueno put on a pitching clinic, defeating Australia 4-0 and the United States 6-1, and making some of the world's best hitters look ordinary in the process. Those two wins put Japan straight through to Sunday's final, which will be played at 3.00 pm with the usual caveat at this tournament of "weather permitting".
Mixing speed with several versions of her devastating change-up and drop, Ueno allowed the Australians only two hits and gave up five scattered hits to the United States, pitching six innings in both games.
Ueno was backed up by Japan's athletic defense, particularly shortstop Rei Nishiyama and third base player Yu Yamamoto, while Japanese speed on offense, and their ability to put the ball in play against even the best pitchers pressured both Australia and then the USA into defensive mistakes that helped Japan score the runs they needed.
No doubt Ueno will be back for Sunday's final, and unless the Americans or Australians can come up with an effective plan against her, Japan will be heavy favourites.
Results
Here is how Saturday's games went, which consisted of all but the final two games of an eight-team Double Page Playoff.
In the 3v4 games, the Netherlands defeated China 7-5 and Chinese Taipei defeated New Zealand 3-0.
The Netherlands/China game, which the Dutch had to win to retain any chance of reaching their assigned target of fifth place in order to retain their funding, was a thrilling extra-inning encounter that went 10 innings, with momentum constantly shifting back and forth. The Dutch took an early 2-0 lead, but China tied the game late and took it into extra innings and tiebreaker mode. Neither team scored in the eighth inning, but the Netherlands took a 4-2 lead in the top of the ninth on a dramatic two-out home run by catcher Nathalie Timmermans that soared high over the fence in left centre field. Timmermans threw her arms in the air as soon as she hit it and threw down the bat. But the Chinese came back with two runs of their own in the bottom of the inning to tie the game again at 4-4.
In the top of the tenth, the Dutch struck on a single by Britt Vonk to score the tiebreak runner, followed by a triple from Chantal Versluis and a double by Jessie van Aalst to make the score 7-4. China replied with one run in the bottom of the tenth but the Dutch had the win they needed over the team that knocked them out of the World Championships two years ago in Whitehorse.
Sadly, it wasn't enough. Because Chinese Taipei had beaten New Zealand, and because both the Dutch and Chinese Taipei then lost in their next games (the exhausted Dutch went down 8-0 to Australia and Chinese Taipei fought to the end before succumbing 2-1 to Canada), Chinese Taipei, by virtue of beating the Dutch during the round-robin, have finished fifth and the Dutch sixth. It remains to be seen what view of this is taken by the Dutch Olympic Committee, who fund the Dutch softball programme. If the Dutch do lose their funding after posting the highest finish achieved by any European team in two straight World Championships, many people will consider them unlucky.
Finally, in the last game of the night, Australia defeated Canada 7-3. So Canada will be fourth, and Australia will play the USA at noon on Sunday, with the loser gaining the Bronze medal and the winner meeting Japan in the Grand Final.