2008 WUC Baseball: Update
July 17th, 2008
Teams Warm up for WUBC with Exhibition Games
Host Czech Republic was beaten by Team USA in a Pre-WUC Exhibition Game
Team Canada Defeats Team CZE U18 in Final Exhibition Game
Team Canada, representing the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), defeated the Czech Republic Under-18 National Junior team, 19-0, at AVG Draci Brno Stadium, in Brno, CZE. Team Canada closes out its exhibition record at 5-1, with the 4th World University Games Baseball Tournament starting on Thursday, July 17th with the Opening Ceremonies, in Ostrava, CZ. Canada's first game is against Chinese Taipei, on Friday, July 18th, at 6:00PM. The Czech Under-18 Team, which travels to Edmonton, Alberta, to participate in the Under-18 World Championships next week, committed five errors and walked five Team Canada batters, hit two more while giving up 20 hits, including a three-run home run by Scott Webster (UBC-Coquitlam, BC). Canada would go on to score 5-runs in the 3rd inning and 6-runs in the 6th inning, both innings they batted around. The Canadians held the young Czech team to 4-hits, as they retired 10 Czechs in a row during the middle innings of the game, striking out 11 and allowing only one base on balls. The entire Team Canada pitching staff pitched a minimum of one inning over the last two exhibition games allowing only one earned run over 14 innings, striking out 22 Czech batters. In addition to Webster's three-run homer, the offensive story for Team Canada came from the entire team as all 9 men who started contributed to the 19-run performance. Infielder Kyle Prevett (Grayson CC-Langley BC) went 4-4 with a walk, four runs scored and one run batted in, Outfielder Ken Fuglerud (Saint Mary's-Lethbridge, AB) went 3 for 5, with a hit by pitch, scored three runs and knocked in two, Shortstop Sammie Starr (UBC-Toronto, ON) knocked in two runs, on two hits, while reaching base four times in the victory over Czech Republic. Webster wound up with 5 runs batted in on his two hits.
Hosts Beaten by Team USA in Pre-WUC Friendly
Also the host team continued its preparation for the Championship as it playe d a friendly against Team USA at the newly reconstructed stadium in Ostrava. At the bottom of the second inning the US team reached their first point.Thanks to great job in defense of both teams none of them scored in the next five innings. After five innings both teams changed their pitchers. Martin Pros replaced Radek Procházka in the Czech team. His second inning did not go very well, as he allowed two hits, one of the being homerun. In this inning the Americans increased their lead to 5:0. At the bottom of the game the result did not change.
