Olympic Times - Sports Daily

The United States erased a four-run deficit to claim a crucial 5-4 victory over Canada on Saturday and keep alive their hopes for an Olympic baseball medal.

Cuba also left it late, Frederich Cepeda’s seventh inning solo home run accounting for all the scoring as the defending gold medalist edged reeling Taiwan 1-0 to maintain their unbeaten record.

South Korea (3-0) joins Cuba (4-0) as the only unbeaten teams, pushing across three runs in the ninth inning to take a 5-3 decision over Asian rivals Japan (2-2).

In other preliminary round action, the Netherlands scored their first runs and notched their first win, stopping China 6-4.

Trailing Canada 4-0 after four innings, the U.S. struck for five unanswered runs with Terry Tiffee driving in the winning score with a two-out, two-run double in the bottom of the seventh.

Brian Duensing tossed 3 1/3 scoreless innings of relief, retiring 10 of the 11 batters he faced, to seal the win and level the Americans’ record at 2-2.

“We came out a little dead,” Tiffee told reporters. “We’ve had a couple of close losses and three early games in a row. We came out slow and finally woke up.”

Cuba and Taiwan, coming off a gut-wrenching 8-7 extra-inning loss to rivals China on Friday, engaged in a riveting pitchers’ duel that was decided by Cepeda’s one swing of the bat.

Cuban starter Elier Sanchez and reliever Norberto Gonzalez combined on a four-hit shutout as the holders improved to 4-0 and Taiwan slipped to 1-3.

Japan’s Takahiro Arai broke open the scoreless contest with a towering two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth only to watch Korean slugger Lee Daeho answered back with a two-run monster shot in the top of the seventh to deadlock the contest at 2-2.

The contest looked head for extra-innings when the Koreans exploded for three runs in the ninth, Kim Hyunsoo and Lee Jongwook each driving in a run while another scored on a throwing error.

South Korea and China will be the only teams to see action on Sunday when they complete their rain interrupted game from Thursday.

from: reuters.com