OLYMPICS/ Preliminaries
Japan enters baseball finals in Olympics test
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-23 09:13
BEIJING, August 22 -- Japanese baseball national team romped into the final of an Olympic test event after beating France 9-4 in a semifinal on Wednesday morning.
Japan achieved an 8-0 easy lead after the first four innings, earning four runs in the fourth which made the game unsuspicious.
Japanese starting pitcher Oba Shota secured a five consecutive hitless innings, forcing three French batters directly strikeouts in the fourth.
French manager sent three pitchers in the first six in an effort to suppress Japanese batters who doubled the Japanese team in the sixth inning after Ohtsuka Jun made a single.
The French batters only gave Japan a slight hit-back in the top eighth when four got runs contributed by two doubles of their teammates.
The Japanese baseballers, regarded as the strongest among the four teams attending the "Good Luck Beijing" 2007 International Baseball Tournament which started on August18, has been unbeaten in four played games.
"They just played very good pitching and I think they will win the champion in the final," French baseman Rousseau Jerome told Xinhua.
Japanese manager Hoshino Senichi sent five pitchers in the nine-inning game, giving French batters various styles of ball which they could not follow.
Japan will meet another winner of the other semifinal, to be played by China and the Czech Republic later, in the final on Thursday evening.
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