Press Release Hungarian Baseball and Softball Federation
Budapest/Vienna-
On Sunday, 30.09.09 the 2009 Danube Cup was played in Vienna, hosted by the Austrian Baseball Federation.
In a well organized tournament, the hosting team from Austria was able to secure wins against Slovakia and Hungary and take this year’s title.
The first game of the day between Slovakia and Austria turned out to be a game dominated by both pitching staffs and ended in a 4:2 win for Austria after 9 innings.
The second game of the day, between our Hungarian team and the Slovakian selection became a real thriller game. After taking an 8:2 lead after 5 1/2, the Hungarian team seemed to be on the right track to beating their long time rivals, but timely hitting combined with a couple of BB let the Slovakians tie the game in the bottom of the 6th inning. Good defense from both teams for the following 7! innings took this 8:8 tie into a 14th innings. Hungary was able to score one more run and took the 9:8 lead in the top of the 14th inning. They only needed 3 outs to finish this 4 hour and 45 minute game in their favor, but the pitching was not able to keep up. Two walks and a long base hit to centerfield let the Slovakians scored the tying and the winning run for team Slovakia.
Although game two for the Hungarian team started only 20 minutes later, the team was able to play six good innings against a very good Austrian team. The score was 6:4 for team Austria after five innings, when suddenly the Hungarian defense got tired. Austria was able to take advantage of this situation and scored 11 runs in the top of the sixth inning to take a save 17:4 lead. Hungary, unable to fight back at this point, had to let the Austrians take the win after 7 innings with a final score of 17:5.
By the end of the second game at around 8:30pm, team Hungary had played almost 71/2 hours of continues baseball.
Although team Hungary was not able to take a win in this year’s Danube Cup, their performance was by far much better than in previous years and shows great improvement from a team that finished fourth in last year’s CEB Euro qualifier.
The Hungarian Baseball Federation would like to send big “Danke” to the Austrian Federation for hosting a great baseball event!
Results:
Slovakia – Austria 2:4 (9 innings)
Hungary – Slovakia 9:10 (14 innings)
Austria – Hungary 17:5 (7 innings)