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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Juniors Beat Cuba!!!!!

Cheng
Amateur
For the second time this summer, a Taiwanese select national team beat a Cuban national team. Following in the footsteps of the University level NT, the Taiwanese junior NT defeated Cuba today in a 12 inning thriller 2-1. Even though there was no medal at stake, Taiwan earned 5th place overall in the tourney. The hero for Taiwan was pitcher Kai-Wen Cheng (see above pic). He pitched a complete game, holding the Cuban offense to 1 run on 8 hits over 12 innings!! He also had 5 K's and 1 walk. I hope the adrenaline hasn't worn off for Cheng, cause his arm is gonna be hella sore! He was clocked at 90 to 92 mph, even in the 12th inning!!!
Box Link
Even with the 5th place finish, the fact that Taiwan defeated both Cuba and the USA in the same tourney (If I'm not mistaken, it's something that has never been done before at any level of international competition) makes this a successful showing in my eyes. The 3 teams that Taiwan lost to: Canada and Mexico (are playing each other for the bronze medal), and South Korea (is playing the US for the gold medal) are all still playing for some hardware. The only bad game Taiwan had in the whole tourney was the 8-1 loss to Canada; other than that they played both Mexico and South Korea to a standstill. I'm very very very proud of this team. Despite the lack of critical acclaim for individual talent on the team, it goes to show that baseball is a TEAM sport. Congrats guys!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, another 2-1 win. The wins over both Cuba and the US show the true talent of our team. Im really proud of them! What happened to Cuba though? Werent they unbeaten before the US played them? Did they lose more games after they lost to the USA??

TTT said...

The only game that Cuba lost prior to today was to the US in the quarterfinals - Cuba was the #1 seed matched up against the #4 seed from the other group - that being the USA. Unfortunately once you get to the finals round, it's one loss and you're out of the running for a medal.

Anonymous said...

oh, i see. so thats how it is. Thats to bad for Cuba... but im really glad we beat them- im real proud of our boys!!!!