Undefeated Taiwan rumbled their way into tomorrow’s title game in the IBAF Under-21 Baseball World Cup tournament with a 2-0 shutout of Nicaragua in the Super Round Robin at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night.
What should have been a fairly easy game turned into a defensive struggle for Taiwan as they squandered several golden scoring opportunities to find themselves in a scoreless tie after five innings of play.
Besides hitting into three double plays over the course of the game, the hosts committed a base-running error in the fifth to negate a leadoff triple by Lo Kuo-lin that would most likely have scored at least a run in the inning.
Fortunately for Taiwan, the stellar pitching by starter Chen Ming-hsuan and his successor Peng Shih-ying bailed out the dearth of offense just long enough to set up Yang Tai-chun’s go-ahead home run off Nicaragua starter Horace Rigby in the bottom of the sixth to give Taiwan the lead for good.
“I knew I had a chance the minute the ball left the bat,” Yang said after the game.
His thunderous swing was the difference in the game as it not only brought the crowd to its feet, but also injected new-found confidence that led to an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth.
“I am very proud of our players for their uncanny poise and tremendous resilience despite the miscues,” a very relieved Taiwan skipper Kuo-Lee Chien-fu said after the game.
Nicaragua had their share of scoring chances against the Taiwan pitching, as their leadoff runners reached safely in four of the nine innings played, but came up empty on all four to succumb to the shutout loss.
Picking up the win for Taiwan was Chen, who tossed six innings of five-hit ball to beat his counterpart Rigby. Also starring was Peng, who entered in the seventh with one on and no outs, and retired the next three straight to keep the shutout intact.
Next up for the home squad will be the unbeaten samurais from Japan, who also earned a berth into tomorrow’s title game at the Intercontinental yesterday afternoon with a 1-0 win over South Korea. The opening pitch is scheduled for 12:30pm.
In the day’s other game, Australia beat the Czech Republic 9-4.
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