British open with scrappy 4-2 win over Germany

After struggling to generate offence for the first four innings, the British took advantage of some German defensive miscues to score two runs in each of their last two bats to win 4-2. Carling Hare pitched four shutout innings while Amy Moore and Sarah Craig had two hits each for the victors.

In the first game for each team, teams Great Britain and Germany got strong starting pitching performances from both Carling Hare and Lisa Jansen and battled right down to the end in the tournament´s most tightly-contested game so far.

The British loaded the bases in the bottom of the first inning and the Germans did likewise in the top of the third, but neither team was able to get on the scoreboard until the fourth, when Germany struck first. In relief pitcher Kori Wauch´s first inning of work, Christina Muller started a two-out rally with a base hit, then advanced to second base on a passed ball and scored on an RBI single to right field by Julia De Jong.

After failing to get a run across in the first inning, a couple of base-running miscues cost the Brits in the following innings--Sarah Craig was called out for leading off first base while attempting to steal in the second and Amy Moore was called out on appeal for leaving second too soon on a deep fly out to center field in the third. But after giving up only three hits through the first four innings, Jansen and the German defence got into some trouble in the fifth.

Craig led off the last half of the inning with a single. She was then bunted to second by Stephanie Pierce, moved to third on a hit by Chia Louie and, after Moore was then intentionally walked to load the bases, scored on a wild pitch to tie the game. The next batter was Laura Thompson, whose ground ball to shortstop was thrown away, allowing Louie to score the go-ahead run.

The British team added two more runs in the bottom of the sixth on no hits--Sarah Jones drew a lead-off walk and scored on a throwing error trying to force her out at third, and Karlene Headly got aboard on a throwing error by relief pitcher Mona Horner and scored on another wild pitch.

Down by three runs, the Germans tried to claw back into the game in their last time at bat. When Katharina Szalay drove in Quinn to cut the deficit to two, there were still none out with the tying runs aboard. Sensing trouble, starting pitcher Hare re-entered the game to snuff out the rally. On the next batter, the Germans caught an unfortunate break when a ground ball hit by Friderike Meinck resulted in a collision on the base path between shortstop Louie and base-runner Alina von Bruck, which resulted in von Bruck being called out for interference. Hare then got the last two batters to fly out, ending the game.

Post-Game Comments:

Hayley Scott (head coach of team Great Britain): "I think both team played an excellent game. It was our first game and obviously a crucial one to get out of our pool, since we have pretty strong opponents there. I’m proud of my team. They played a good game, although I would love to have seen some runs earlier. It’s a bit frustrating for a coach when the team isn’t scoring with the bases loaded, but we fought our way through to win."

Nils Hachen (coach of team Germany): "It’s always hard to start a tournament, because you never know what to expect. Obviously, we tried to win this one and it was a difficult one. We competed very well, but they have a really good team. We made at least two errors and they won by two runs, so that’s what cost us the game and now we’ll have to beat Russia to get through."