Despite being no-hit for 4 2/3 innings, Korea finds a way to advance to the Championship game
Final Score: Southern Illinois 1 Seoul, Korea 5
This game was indeed wild from the get go. The official start time was 1:38pm CT on Tuesday, August 7th, an hour and a half past the scheduled start time of 12:30pm.
The first inning went by fast for Southern Illinois where they were punched out twice in a 1-2-3 inning from Korea’s starter H. J. Kang. His counterpart on the mound, Illinois’s Gavin Baldwin, had a tougher time finding the strike zone. With two walks and a “hit by pitch” Korea loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the inning. Baldwin’s struggles continued when he threw a wild pitch to the backstop allowing the runner from third, J. S. Kim, to score putting Seoul, Korea on top 1-0.
Korea continued to put away Southern Illinois batters in the top of the second while forcing a groundout and a fly out in two pitches. After the second out a distant rumble of thunder made the umpires decide to stop the game and send the players up under the concourse of Rent One Park. Skies quickly darkened, and a downpour of rain temporarily flooded the turf field. An hour and a half delay passed by before they officially postponed it to the next morning due to time constraints with the Southern Illinois Miners professional baseball team also having a home game the same night.
Nonetheless, the night passed, and we were back to baseball in Marion, IL at 10:00am the following morning. Korea sent starter H. J. Kang back out and he went right back to being dominant, getting a strikeout to end the inning that was started the day before.
Jumping ahead to the top of the third, Bryce Anderson of Southern Illinois knocked a ball into right field for the first hit of the ball game. His teammates were not able to bring him home. With Bunselmeyer striking out and a Winter's grounding out.
The bottom of the third also did not start well for Southern Illinois when shortstop Cole Malawy wasn’t able to come up with a ground ball, starting the inning with an error. That was just the precursor of several mistakes for the Southern Illinois team. A wild pitch from Nick Compton and another error made by shortstop Malawy led to Korea scoring a pair of runs. Still WITHOUT a hit, Seoul, Korea was in the driver's seat leading Southern Illinois 3-0.
Southern Illinois went two more innings without getting anything going offensively. Their pitching kept them in the game by carrying a no-hitter for 4 2/3 innings until Korea’s H. K. Choi broke up the no-no.
Korea was able to put up some insurance runs in the top of the sixth inning to give them a five-run lead heading into the last inning of regulation play. Southern Illinois had opportunities in both the fifth and sixth innings but weren’t able to capitalize stranding runners both innings. Down to their final three outs Southern Illinois had to at least send five across the plate to force extras. They weren’t able to accomplish that and were only able to send one run across the plate on a fielder’s choice.
That was the end of the tournament for host region Southern Illinois as they lose both of their games to the same team in Seoul, Korea. Congratulations on a great tournament and thank you for your hard work and dedication throughout! Korea will now move on into a “winner take all” game against also undefeated Levittown, Puerto Rico on Wednesday, August 8th at 7:00pm CT at Rent One Park in Marion, IL