by Michal Hanus
On the third day of the Prague Baseball Week on Thursday, the last day dedicated for games in the groups brought one big surprise; the Czech Under 21 team defeated the Czech national team 6-2. Interesting was, that the first inning finished 6-2 and no run was scored till the end of the game. This result moved Czech Republic Under 21 into first place in a group A and Czech Republic to second. Both advance into the semifinals.
Group B was won by Croatia without any loss. In the last game they crushed USA Athletes 9-1. The second advancing team from group B was France, which without any complications shut out Slovakia 5-0. Slovakia didn’t score any runs in the whole round robin! Another negative surprise is that both teams from the United States were eliminated in the preliminary round in addition with Sweden, all playing now for fifth to eighth place.
Croatia 100 060 020 9 6 1 USA Athletes 010 000 000 1 3 3 AIST (USA) 000 000 000 0 5 2 Czech Republic 100 000 100 2 7 2 France 100 000 040 5 5 2 Slovakia 000 000 000 0 4 1 Sweden 410 001 600 12 10 1 AIST (USA) 302 000 000 5 6 5 Czech Republic 200 000 000 2 4 1 Czech Under 21 600 000 000 6 7 2
Scheduled Games for Friday:
5th – 8th place games – Sweden vs. Slovakia and USA Athletes vs. AIST
semifinal games – Czech Republic Under 21 vs. France and Croatia vs. Czech Republic