Dog Day Afternoon

It was a tough day for the Chinese baseball team the day following the USA game. There were a lot of spent emotions left on the field after that game. It was difficult to sleep that night. We were not prepared to play a game today. I have never seen us so flat and unemotional. there really is not a whole lot to say about the game other than we did not come to play. We mustered only 2 hits for the game and our pitchers left too many balls over the plate that were well hit. I still had many communication issues with my young catcher as I tried to take command of calling the game. Still only about a 50% success rate on him calling the right pitch. We lost 10-0 in seven innings and never threatened the whole game. Their pitcher was very impressive as he moved the ball around very well and made us chase bad pitches, which we obliged. Their hitters did not impress me even though the score was impressive. They did what they had to do to get the barrel on the ball but it was not much of a task as out starter was throwing 76-79 MPH. Yes that was his fastball. If you have any velocity on your fastball you could pitch them inside quite easily. They don't have much power, just guys who make contact and have good speed. We would have had a bettter match up for them but we had to use our pitcher for the Korea rain game. The game got out of hand early so we pitched our second tier pitchers to make sure they got to play in the Olympics.
I have never seen our team play as poorly as I did today. There may have been many contributing factors: We lost our leader, catcher Wang Wei, to a knee injury that will require surgery, We lost our close who has been suspended for 4 games due to hitting the batter in the head the previous night and one of our starting pitchers hurt his ankle in the Chinese Taipei game and could not perform. The biggest loss by far was our catcher. He was the stanilizing force for our pitching staff and did a wonderful job calling the game. Let's hope the next game against Cuba brings us better fortune.