by JB Tucker, Therwil Flyers
Game one of the Swiss finals was a very intense back and forth battle between the Therwil Flyers and the Bern Cardinals. The Therwil Flyers starting pitcher, Lukas Croton, came out ready for the big day. Croton struck out the first four batters that he faced, and only gave up six hits in six strong innings of work. The Flyers struck first, when catcher JB Tucker hit a two run home run in the bottom of the first inning. Unfortunately for the Flyers, the Cardinals battled back and scored four runs in the third inning to take the lead 4-2. The Flyers knotted the score in the bottom half of the fourth inning by scoring two runs on 3 doubles. Starting the fourth inning off, Stefan Koller doubled, then scored on a rbi ground out, then the Flyers second baseman, Adrian Kaufmann doubled and came around to score on a Sebastian Zwyer double. With the score tied going into the bottom half of the seventh inning, the Flyers took the lead on a 2 rbi single from Daniel Eichenberger. This lead was not safe, as the Cardinals inched within one run in the top of the eighth, scoring on consecutive two out doubles from Seth Suplin and Eduardo Villacis. The Flyers answered in a big way in the bottom of the eighth scoring nine runs on eight hits, two of which were home runs from Reto Siegel and Stefan Koller. The Flyers did not give up a run in the ninth and won the game 15-5. Hitting standouts for the Flyers were Hide Oshima, who was 2-3 and Stefan Koller who was 3-5 with a home run.
Game two of the Swiss finals was far less exciting than game one. The Bern Cardinals, down one game to zero, came ready to play. They scored nine runs in the first three innings to jump out to a huge lead 9-0. In the first three innings, the Cardinals pounded out eight hits and took advantage of four Flyers errors. This lead was too much for the Flyers, as starting pitcher Eduardo Villacis pitched six innings, giving up only four hits and one run. The Flyers kept fighting back, unfortunately the huge lead that was given up early in the game was insurmountable. The Flyers were only able to score 3 runs, two of which came in the ninth inning. Offensively for the Flyers, Stefan Koller put together a very nice game going 2-3 with a double and a run scored. Final score of game two was 11-3 in favor of the Cardinals.