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| Great Britain loses Championship game to the Netherlands but takes home three major achievements |
Netherlands 6, Great Britain 1
September 16, Barcelona
The Great Britain baseball team lost to a strong and heavily-favoured Netherlands side at the Olympic baseball stadium in Montjuic today, ending its outside chance of stunning the European baseball world by winning the European Championship. In finishing first and retaining the European title for a fifth consecutive Championship, the Netherlands booked a spot in the 2008 Olympic baseball competition in Beijing.
However, GB will go on to play in the final Olympic qualification tournament in spring 2008, which gives it another chance – and currently its last chance - to make its debut Olympic appearance before baseball leaves the Olympics for 2012.
Indeed, Great Britain will come away with a number of major achievements from the EC: its best ever finish in the modern format; a place at the Olympic qualifier in spring 2008 and a debut place in the modern World Championship in 2009.
In ten days of baseball that has seen managers, players and fans alike pouring over schedules and standings to work out who can qualify for what in which circumstances, today’s game had refreshingly simple connotations. It was a game for the European Championship and for automatic Olympic qualification – winner takes all.
Before the competition started, only the very optimistic would have predicted that Great Britain, it’s previous best European finish a seventh spot in 2005, would be one game away from the European title and the Olympics.
Accordingly, the mood on the team bus heading to the game was buoyant, especially as the Netherlands had endured a marathon 11 inning game against hosts Spain the night before in which, egged on by a partisan crowd, the Spanish came very close to defeating the Dutch.
Great Britain’s best chance against the Dutch was to apply pressure early on – in the seventh inning of the previous night’s game, the Dutch fielding had crumbled when the Spanish got something going offensively. A catalogue of uncharacteristic errors saw the Netherlands concede five runs in one inning.
Unfortunately for GB, today’s Dutch team was not so generous and, with Great Britain unable to get men on base for huge portions of the game, it seemed too leisurely for the Dutch. Though GB starter Brian Essery pitched well enough to win the game – allowing three earned runs on eight hits over 6 1/3 innings – there looked no danger of Britain replying as the Netherlands gently built up a lead with a run in each of the first three innings.
The Netherlands was by no means potent with the bat against Essery’s pitching, frequently grounding out or flying out, which made it so frustrating that if GB could have scored one or two runs early the Dutch might have been flustered as exhibited against Spain – and then we would really have had a gripping Championship game.
To the relief of the GB crowd, their team finally recorded a hit in the seventh and later loaded the bases in the top of the ninth, scoring Adam Roberts on a throwing error from right field for a consolation run. But by then the Netherlands had increased its tally to six with three runs in the bottom of the seventh.
Summing it up, General Manager Alan Smith said, “We could have pushed them but our at-bats weren’t long enough. We hit too many flyouts and popups.”
However, considering the way the Netherlands have played in the tournament prior to this game – going 7-0 with 94 runs scored and 13 conceded - Great Britain not only kept the scoreline very respectable but was not battered by the Dutch either, containing them with strong pitching and tight defence.
“There’s no shame in losing 6-1 to the reigning European Champions in the Championship game,” agreed Smith.
If Spain beats Sweden in tonight’s tournament wrap-up, Great Britain will confirm second place overall, as Spain, Germany and GB will be tied on a 3-2 record in the medal stage. With each team winning one game against each other, the tied-decider will be the number of runs conceded in games against each other.
Spain and Britain (both with 15 conceded) will thus finish above Germany (16), and GB will finish above Spain due to beating them in the opening game of the tournament. If Spain loses tonight, GB finishes third behind Germany.
If GB had lost to the Spanish on September 7 the effect on the above workings could have meant GB finished fourth and out of contention for the ultimate goal of the Olympics.
Reflecting on this on the final day of the tournament, Head Coach Stephan Rapaglia said, “It’s something beautiful about the way this tournament has been formatted that our final position is affected so much by the result of our first game.”
And, with that, he began discussing with his staff plans for the next test – the Olympic qualifier in six months. With at least three major tournaments between now and the end of 2009, Great Britain Baseball has exciting times ahead.
By Tim Stride
LINKS
You can review GB's achievements at the EC with:
- Reports from every game on this site
- All the results, standings and a wealth of stats on the European Baseball Federation's EC site
- Photos on Spain's official EC site
- Playbacks of selected games on stadeo.tv
Click for links to these sites
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