By Bob Fromer
Plant City, Florida: 25 January – “That was superb,” Head Coach Steve Patterson told a happy GB Slowpitch Team at the end of a long and eventful day at the ISF Slowpitch World Cup. “Just superb! I can't tell you how much I'm smiling inside!”
And Steve wasn't the only one. The GB Team had just booked themselves a place in tomorrow's final with stunning victories over both of the American teams in the competition, in games that couldn't have been more different.
The only thing they shared was an almost unbearable level of tension and excitement.
After losing to both the American teams during the round-robin phase of the tournament, taking them down in consecutive games in the Page Playoffs was all the sweeter.
In the afternoon game, GB took on the undefeated USA Fort Walton Beach, and more than two hours later, after a seven-inning war of attrition that featured 56 runs, 44 hits, 14 walks and 18 errors, GB emerged as the team that blinked last with a 32-24 victory.
Just over an hour later, GB went back out under the lights, piled up an early lead against the USA Ink Daddyz, and then played great defense, holding the Americans scoreless over the last three innings to hang on to a 13-10 win.
As a result, GB will have the luxury of watching Fort Walton Beach and the Ink Daddyz fight it out at 9.00 am tomorrow morning for the privilege of taking on Great Britain in the final that will be played at noon in the main Plant City Stadium.
GB v Fort Walton Beach: The Beginning
When these two teams met on the first day of the tournament, Fort Walton Beach had more or less controlled a fairly even game and emerged with a 12-7 win. Today, control was the last thing that Fort Walton had at any stage in a mad encounter that kept the spectators on the edge of their seats and the coaches tearing their hair.
GB came up in the top of the first inning and promptly sent 18 batters to the plate, with 13 of them coming in to score. But GB had considerable help from their opponents.
Fort Walton Beach starting pitcher Timmy Chapel, who had pitched the full game against GB on Thursday evening, just couldn't get anyone out. After giving up three solid hits and a walk to start the game, he then walked three more in a row, and couldn't get a pitch near the plate.
Andy Collins came in to replace Chapel, still with no one out, but was greeted with a barrage of hits and saw his teammates commit a bunch of errors. By the time the inning finally came to an end, and Fort Walton Beach came in for their first at-bat, they were a baker's dozen behind.
GB had nine hits in the inning, but the biggest blow was a crushing triple into the left field corner by shortstop Chris Yoxall that put the first two GB runs on the board and set the tone for the inning. Chris went on to have six hits in seven at-bats, knocking in five runs.
No sooner had they piled up this lead, however, then the GB Team started to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. Three GB errors in the bottom of the first inning helped the Americans claw three runs back straight away, and it could have been more.
But GB then took complete control of the contest. Fort Walton Beach failed to score a single run during the second, third and fourth innings while GB added two in the third, five in the fourth (during which Missy Wellborn took over the pitching chores for Fort Walton), and one more in the top of fifth. The score was now 21-3, and GB was cruising. Surely a mercy-rule ending was just around the corner.
GB v Fort Walton Beach: The Middle
But that's when everything changed, and suddenly we a mirror version of the first inning. This time it was GB pitcher David Lee who started falling behind in the count and then either walking Fort Walton hitters or serving up strikes that were dispatched with authority to all parts of the field.
When the third out was finally recorded, Fort Walton had scored 13 runs of their own on 11 hits, three walks and three GB errors. Suddenly, the score was 21-16, and the terrible thought was occurring to most of the GB players and all of their fans that a game that had seemed completely in the bag could still be lost.
That it wasn't came down to two things: the fact that GB kept on hitting and scoring runs and the fact that GB pitcher David Lee pulled himself together and gutted out the last two innings. And the truth was that he had no choice, since GB's other pitcher, Brad Gilmour, had left the game by that point with a minor muscle strain.
Undaunted by the nightmare inning they had just gone through in the field, GB started the top of the sixth with four straight singles by Emily Clifford, Ben Taylor, Areej Elmaazi and pinch-hitter Claudine Snape, sandwiched around a walk to Ed Watkinson. Further base hits by Kirstie Leach and Chris Yoxall rounded off the inning and that precarious five run advantage was now back to ten, at 26-16.
GB v Fort Walton Beach: The End
But GB was still living on their nerves. In the Fort Walton sixth, Areej Elmaazi dropped a catchable fly ball in centre field and Ian Kulka muffed an equally catchable line drive at second base. Somehow, however, the Americans only managed to turn that into a couple of runs.
Back came GB in the top of the seventh and batted round for the third time in the game, scoring six more runs to stretch the lead out to 32-18. A tiring Missy Wellborn chipped in a couple of walks and a double by David Lee was a big blow, giving him five RBIs to equal Chris Yoxall's total for the day.
Surely that was that.
But like the Robert de Niro character in Cape Fear, who just won't die no matter how much punishment is inflicted on him, back came Fort Walton Beach. It was unthinkable that they could win from that position, but as the baserunners mounted against David Lee, who by then was pitching on fumes, the ultimate nightmare scenario once more reared its head.
Eventually, after six runs had scored, Walton Beach centre fielder Skeeter Johnson lifted a fly ball into centre field, and Areej Elmaazi made the catch that brought the carousel to a stop. GB had their win, in a game that those who played in it will probably never forget.
“If we had to lose to anyone,” Fort Walton Beach captain Cheryl Trapnell said afterwards, “I'm glad it was you. But,” she added, “I'm sure we'll see you tomorrow.”
GB v Ink Daddyz: The Beginning
No sooner was the win over Fort Walton digested, along with a couple of buckets from a nearby KFC, then GB was back out to face the local Plant City team, the Ink Daddyz, who had made surprisingly hard work of defeating Canada in their opening playoff game by a score of 32-23.
This was the team that had taken a 9-8 extra-inning win over GB on Friday evening in what at that point had been the game of the tournament.
In that game, the Ink Daddyz had jumped out to an early lead and then saw GB claw it back. This game started the same way, with Ink Daddyz putting up five runs in the top of the first inning against David Lee, who struggled with the umpire's strike zone, walked two and was working constantly behind in the count.
But this time, GB wasn't content just to chip away at the Americans' lead. Instead, they overwhelmed it.
In a first inning reminiscent of the Fort Walton game, GB sent 16 hitters to the plate and scored 11 runs on nine hits, two walks, and two Ink Daddyz errors. Again, GB forced their opponents to change pitchers in the first inning, and Claudine Snape and Chris Yoxall, who continued his torrid batting, both had two hits in the frame.
However, that was almost the end of the GB offense for the evening. Two more runs in the bottom of the third inning, driven in by Chris Yoxall and Ruth Macintosh, were all that GB could manage for the rest of the game. Thirteen runs was the total. Could they keep the Ink Daddyz at bay?
GB v Ink Daddyz: The Resistance
It wasn't long before the Ink Daddyz began to chip away.
Two runs were scored in the second inning, and it would have been more but for a superb running catch by Ben Taylor on a ball hit over his head in left field.
A single run was added in the third.
Two more runs were scored in the fourth, and again it would have been more had it not been for a superb diving stop by Emily Clifford on a hard-hit ball between first and second and a flip from a prone position to David Lee covering first. But the score was now 13-10, much too close for comfort with three innings still to go.
Brad Gilmour came in to relieve David Lee in the fifth inning, and suddenly the Ink Daddyz found runs harder to come by. In fact, they found them impossible, as Brad and the GB defense shut the door over the last three innings.
In the fifth inning, a 1-6-3 double play closed the Americans down.
In the sixth inning, Ruth Macintosh made a difficult catch on a long line drive look easy, and Emily Clifford made a superb pick on a low throw in the dirt.
In the top of the seventh inning, with two on and only one out, Lucy Binding at third made a fine stop on a hard-hit ball to get the crucial second out on a force play. And then Ruth Macintosh glided in to pluck another line drive out of the air in right field, and GB had their place in the final.
In that wild game against Fort Walton, GB had committed ten errors; against the Ink Daddyz, they committed one.
“At the end of that game,” Steve Patterson said, “we played defense – and then more defense. And then we played more defense. It was brilliant to watch.”
One game was kind of ugly. The other was full of skill and determination. Both games were wins.
And now the Gold Medal at the 2014 Slowpitch World Cup is just one game away.
Previous games
Reports on GB's previous games in the ISF Slowpitch World Cup can be found on these links:
http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-opens-world-cup-with-win-over-canada
http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-looks-towards-playoff-run
http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-grabs-another-easy-win
http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-loses-extra-inning-thriller
http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-end-round-robin-with-a-win
Saturday round-robin results
GB 23, Turks & Caicos 4
Bulgaria 27, France 6
Final round-robin standings
1 – USA Fort Walton Beach (7-0)
2 – USA Ink Daddys (5-2)
3 – Great Britain (5-2)
4 – Canada (4-3)
5 – France (2-5)
6 – Curacao (2-5)
7 – Turks & Caicos (1-6)
8 – Bulgaria (1-6)
Saturday playoff results
GB 32, Fort Walton Beach 24
Ink Daddyz 32, Canada 23
France 19, Turks & Caicos 6
Curacao 19, Bulgaria 12
Fort Walton Beach 28, France 7
Curacao 12, Canada 9
Turks & Caicos 28, Bulgaria 27
GB 13, Ink Daddyz 10
Fort Walton Beach 23, Curacao 8
France 23, Canada 5
Sunday's games
9.00 am – Fort Walton Beach v Ink Daddyz. The winner will go to the final; the loser will be third.
10.30 am – France v Turks & Caicos Islands for places.
12.00 pm – GB v the winner of Fort Walton v Ink Daddyz for the Gold Medal.