Czechs advance to Little League Intermediate in USA
Last week Jablonec hosted European-African qualification for Little League Intermediate which will take place in Livermore, California. And Czech Northwest region won and qualified.
Czech baseball had two teams at the tournament, Northeast and Northwest. And neither of them started the tournament ideally. Northwest entered the tournament with a 3-4 loss against Netherlands moving into the loser bracket from a get go. Northeast beat Lithuanian Kaunas 9-8 in the first round, but then lost to Germany 1-12 in the second round. The two Czech teams then faced each other in the loser bracket, with Northwest winning 13-1 in the end.
The win energized Northwest and after beating Croatia 12-2 and Germany 5-1, they advanced to the finals where they were to face Netherlands. Dutch quickly took a 2-0 lead, after taking advantage of Czech defensive error. Coaches then substituted the pitcher, and Vilém Vančura came in for Petr Fejt. New pitcher only allowed one run for the remainder of the game.
Northwest scored three runs in the third inning taking a lead for a bit. However, Dutch tied the game in the fourth inning and the game got more dramatic. We had to wait until the eighth inning for the resolution. Czechs managed to score a walk-off run thanks to Jan Vik’s hit. The main tournament starts on 30th of July and we will know the winner on 6th of August.
