by Joe Yun
The Austrians played Croatia in Villadecans and proved once again – the day after the close match against the Czechs- that they can compete and are not to far away from beating one of the established teams in the European A-Pool.
After the first Inning the score was 1-1 enabled through strong hits by Austrian batters Joachim FRICK an Peter FERAK
However Croatia scored three runs in the second Inning while normally sure-handed shortstop Lutz RAUCH made a few errors.
Austrian Starter Gregor KLINC got also better as the game progressed and controlled the Croatian Offense till the 6th Inning. His counterpart Mario ZDELAR held the Austrian offense also scoreless till the 6th. Both team scored one run each and in the beginning of the 7th the score was 5-2 for the Croatians.
The crucial seventh Inning resulted in lots of hard git balls by Croatia and their offense pounded on Gregor KLINC scoring three more runs to decide the game. KLINC was replaced by veteran hurlr Wolfgang STRINI who pitched well till the end of the game.
The ninth Inning brought another run by Austria and the final Score was 8-3 for Croatia.
Autrian National Team coach Martin LANGLOIS said after the game that “it was a biter loss today but to win games on this level our defense has to play without making any errors”.
BOXSCORE
Photo: (c) Joe Yun