Thriller! Russians score 4 in bottom of 8th to shock Germans

After seven scoreless innings, Germany scored three runs in the top of the eighth and Russia scored four in the bottom half to win what has the most entertaining game of the tournament so far. A classic pitching duel between Daria Shembereva and Mona Horner finished in a dramatic fashion that was either thrilling or gut-wrenching, depending on your perspective.

Both teams knew going in that the outcome of this game would probably play a large role in which teams from Group C advance to the second round, and they treated it as such.

Russia pitched Daria Shembereva, one of the stars of European women´s softball, and she was dominant as usual. In the first seven innings, she sat the Germans down in order five times, striking out eight, giving up only three hits and walking nobody. The only real trouble she faced was when the first two batters got on base in the top of the fifth, but she got out of the jam when her defence made two nice plays to get lead runners on two bunt attempts.

For Germany, pitcher Mona Horner matched her inning for inning, also giving up just three hits through seven innings. While not as overpowering as her Russian counterpart, with only two strikeouts, she used a good selection of pitches to get the Russians to pop up often, and she also got some good defence behind her.

The eighth inning is when things got really interesting. Under international rules, teams begin all extra innings with a runner on second base and Germany´s first batter, Julia De Jong, worked Shembarova to a full count and then slapped a double into the gap in left-center field, scoring Christina Muller for the game´s first run. Miriam Kemmer then singled to put runners at the corners with none out, and a suddenly mortal Shembereva was lifted in favour of Ekaterina Eronina.

With Eronina pitching, the Russians managed to cut down two runs at the plate on a German squeeze-play attempt and an infield grounder, but a two-out single by Katarina Szalay plated two more runs to make it a 3-0 game, and had the Germans smelling victory.

The Russian half of the eighth began with Verdzhinia Levich bunting runner Tatiana Beltyukova over to third base, and she scored on a ground ball hit by pinch hitter Tatiana Sorokina, who was called safe at first base on a very close play. However, after a fly out, the Germans still had a two-run lead with two out and only one runner on base. They just couldn´t close it out.

The Russians got some life with a bloop single by Daria Semenova to move Sorokina to second. That was followed by a hit to left field by Anastasia Buchenkova to score Sorokina, with Sorokina advancing to third and Buchenkova to second on the throw home--the tying and winning runs were now in scoring position.

Running out of gas just as Shembarova had in the top half of the inning, Horner was taken out and replaced by reliever Janneke Ogink, who only pitched to one batter. The last batter of the game was Evgenia Egiazarova, who hit a walk-off single to right-center field, scoring two runs to give Russia an incredible 4-3 victory.

Post-Game Comments:

Ekaterina Eronina (pitcher for Team Russia): "It was a good game. I‘m really excited that we actually managed to win this one. We had so many chances in the first half of the game, but we lacked a little bit of luck I guess. When we were losing 3-0, we decided we had nothing to lose and just played our best. It was maybe the most important game in our pool."

Christine Bruckner (assistant coach for Team Germany): "The game was great--all the girls tried their best on both sides. It´s just the finish that´s too bad. Horner pitched so well and we were glad about that. When we were up 3-0, we knew we could afford to give up a run or two without costing us, so we played out-for-out, but then we just couldn´t get the last out."