European Championship Men: Day 3 + VIDEO
Six games were scheduled for Wednesday. These were the last round robin games.
Pools C and D will be determined according to the round robin standings. The best three teams from each group will move to the pool C and the remaining teams will make up the pool D.
The top four teams will come out of the pool C and will play for two spots in the final game.
Remaining teams will play for their positions in the final standings.
Great Britain 10, Sweden 0
This was the
third game at the tournament for team Sweden. The playes kept enjoying their
experience intake, even though they didn’t recorded a single hit. Only one
error was added to their stats though, and two out of the four innings were
scoreless. The British players hit three homeruns and ended the game
prematurely on run-ahead rule.
Homeruns: Joshua Peat, Kevin Stockford,
James Darby
Czech Republic 12, Germany 2
Team Germany
played a great game against the Czechs. Felix Schwan from Germany scored the
first run of the game while the Czechs recorded a fielding error. Neither German
defense played perfectly, „we could have done a better job, I regret those two
errors, which cost us a few runs,“ said Wolfgang Walther, German head coach. Despite
a number of National Team rookies in the Czech line-up, there were no doubts
about the winner of this game.
Croatia 7, Sweden 0
A day will come
and number zero will not be on the Swedish side, but sadly, the day has not
come yet. But they were very close! In the top of the fifth, Thomas Mikkelsen
walked and advanced to second and to third on two back to back groundballs.
Martin Sundqvist stepped into the batters box then, he hit the ball hard,
speedy line-drive aimed to the left field, but the Croatian third baseman
stretched his arm towards the ball and caught it at first, however as hardly as
the ball was hit, the third baseman dropped the ball. Sundqvist ran quickly to
the first base, while Mikkelsen was on his way for the first run for Sweden.
The third baseman picked up the ball he had dropped and made a throw to the
first base. It was a tough call for the umpire, but Sundqvist was the thrid out
of the inning and the game was over with no runs for the Swedes again.
Team Croatia gathered two homeruns in this game.
Homeruns: Kristijan Belas, Sasa
Dokmanovic
Belgium 6, Netherlands 3
This exciting
game resulted into a historical win of the Belgian team. Wout Cnops, the
pitcher, who led his team to the win said: „It’s been one of our goals for a
long time to beat the Netherlands. We have not accomplished this goal in an
official tournament until now.“ Cnops only struck out two Dutch batters and pointed
out the importance of the Belgian defense, that recorded no errors througout this
game. Team Belgium also showed a stronger batting performance and deserved the
historical success.
Homerun: Kristof van Aarsen (BEL)
Denmark 10, Israel 0
The score of this
game tells the story itself. Israeli batters were a bit hopeless having
recorded 10 strike-outs. Batters from Denmark on the other hand brought home
seven runs on their hits, including two homeruns. Another three runs were scored
on the opponents errors.
Homeruns: Jacob Mortensen, Anton Brown
Netherlands 12, Italy 4
The last game of
the day was played by the hosting team, therefore many spectator came to the
ballpark. They couldn’t be happy with their team’s performance though. The first
three Italian batters struck out and
nearly 30 minutes long defense began. Italian pitcher Eros Genero was hit by a
line-drive to his shin and had to be substituted. The Dutch battes recorded
incredible 9 runs on 6 hits in the first inning.
Team Italy struck
back in the fourth inning. The Italians pushed the Dutch players to make errors
by finally contacting their pitches and recorded four runs. The Italian audience
was satisfied, even though that their team lost on mercy rule in the fifth
inning.
Homerun: Antony Beaumont (NED)
/photos by Sascha Schneider/
-Helena Novotná-