Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
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Pool play finished in the Olympic baseball tournament and the semifinals are set and they will be geographically aligned: Korea vs. Japan and USA vs. Cuba.
The morning games were both blowouts and shortened by the mercy rule.
Cuba needed only seven innings to polish off China, 17-1 and Korea used just eight to beat the Netherlands 10-0.
Korea finished pool play at 7-0 and Cuba was second at 6-1.
In the evening, both games went to the weird tiebreaker.
In a game played for pride, Taiwan needed 12 innings to beat Canada 6-5. Both Taiwan and Canada finished at 2-5.
And in the only game that would decide playoff seeding, the USA prevailed over Japan 4-2 in 11 innings. Both teams had just two hits through the first 10 innings.
In the 11th inning tiebreaker, USA manager Davey Johnson decided to play for the big inning instead of a bunt and got four runs out of it. Japan answered back with two and had the bases loaded with two outs, but Casey Weathers got pinch hitter Shinnosuke Abe to foul out to end the game.
The USA finished 5-2 and Japan was 4-3.
Cuba and the USA will square off Thursday night at 7:30 pm PT. Korea and Japan will play Friday morning at 4 am PT.
Taiwan and Canada tied for fifth at 2-5, but Taiwan will get fifth place honors because of its head-to-head win. The Netherlands and China were both 1-6 and the Dutch get seventh place as their only win was over China.
http://tinyurl.com/numbersix
For a minute there, I thought you were referring to the upcoming World Cup qualifier between the USA and Cuba. That should be on ESPN.
I don't think NBC will show any Olympic baseball live unless the USA is in the gold medal game and even that's a long shot.
You could watch it online with the snarky commentary from a guy from Rotoworld.
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