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The Final Four in San Diego now has three spots set and only one of the teams was expected to be there.
Just five days after an embarrassing mercy rule shortened loss to Puerto Rico, Cuba extracted revenge on the home team with a dramatic win and advanced to the semifinals in San Diego Saturday to face the Dominican Republic.
Ormari Romero gave up just one run in four innings of work and his team survived a turbulent seventh inning that saw Cuban manager Higinio Velez get ejected and saw its lead cut from 4-1 to 4-3. But Ivan Rodriguez was thrown out at the plate trying to score from first on a single by Carlos Beltran. Rodriquez saw Cuban center fielder Alexi Ramirez bobble the ball, but he was able to get the relay into second baseman Yulieski Gourriel who gunned out Rodriguez at the plate.
Alex Cintron made a throwing error in the fourth that allowed Cuba to build its lead from 2-1 to 4-1
Puerto Rico and Cuba both finished with 4-2 records, but only the team that has the flag with the red triangle and the blue and white stripes goes on while the team with the flas with the blue triangle and red and white stripes stays home. (I had that wrong in an earlier post and I apologize for the error.)
The surprising, and undefeated, Korean team moved on to the semifinals after defeating its Asian rival for the second time in the tournament. Jong-Beom Lee doubled in two runs in the eighth to give Korea the runs it would need. Byung Hyun Kim got the win in relief and Seung Hwan Oh got the save.
Until Lee's big hit, the closest anyone came to scoring was in the second when Akinori Iwamura tried to score from second on a single to right by Tomoya Satozaki, but Jin Young Lee made a good throw to gun him out at the plate.
In the eighth, shortstop Min Jae Kim drew a one-out walk off of Toshiya Sugiuchi. Then Byung Kyu Lee followed with a single to center. Kim surprisingly tried for third and he somehow managed to get around the tag of third baseman Toshiaki Imae and Lee moved up to second.
Japanese manager Sadaharu Oh didn't dispute the call, but did change pitchers bringing in Kyuji Fujikawa. Jong-Beom Lee then drilled a ball in to the gap in left-center to score Kim and Lee, but was thrown out trying for a triple.
The 2-0 lead held up until the ninth when Dae-Sung Koo gave up a leadoff homer to Tsuyoshi Nishioka. One out later, Nobuhiko Matsunaka singled. This made Korean manager In Sik Kim bring in Oh, who struck out pinch hitter Takahiro Arai and left fielder Histoshi Tamura to send the predominantly Korean crowd into ecstasy.
The chants of "Dae Han Min-Gook!" (basically "Korea!" in Korean) are still echoing in Anaheim I think and they will be heard again in San Diego on Saturday night.
Korea's opponent is still to be determined as Team USA and Mexico will play Thursday afternoon in Anaheim.
The USA will advance if:
They beat Mexico OR
They lose to Mexico 1-0 in 9 innings OR
They give up two runs to Mexico and get two outs in the 9th before losing OR
They give up a third run to Mexico after 12 1/3 innings have been played OR
They play a 3-3 tie in 14 innings.
Japan will advance if:
The U.S. loses to Mexico and allows 2 or more runs before 8 2/3 innings have been played OR
The U.S. loses to Mexico and gives up 3 or more runs before 12 1/3 innings have been played.
Mexico will advance ONLY if it wins 3-0 in 13 innings.
For the purposes of a three-way tiebreaker among the USA, Japan, and Mexico, Japan has already surrendered 5 runs in 17 2/3 innings (.283), the USA is presently at 3 runs given up in 9 innings (.333) and Mexico has given up 6 in 9 innings (.667).
I will have a longer report on the Japan-Korea game tomorrow.
Which would not make the Mexican team unhappy. But Mexico has had some hitting problems recently.
And here I thought I'd forgotten everything my Korean co-workers had taught me.
Regarding a 13 inning tie - I don't believe it has to be a 3-3 tie though. Any tie would give the US a 1-1-1 record vs. 1-2 for Japan and 0-2-1 for Mexico.
The part about the tie seems right.
As for the spelling of "Dae Han Min Go(o)k)" I got the spelling from the people next to me. I will doublecheck with some Korean speakers today.
Anyway, Tone-def, the first tiebreaker is head-to-head among the group of three teams -- in which case there's still a tie between Japan, Mexico, and U.S. if Mexico wins today -- they'll all be 1-1 against one another.
The Classic uses mass tiebreakers, so the second rule is used to break the ties among all three teams. This is actually how the U.S. advanced to this round at all, because if only Mexico had been advanced by the runs-allowed tiebreaking method, Canada would then have been advanced thanks to its head-to-head win over the U.S. But instead, the Classic just finds the two teams with the least runs and advances them both.
So basically, the U.S. has benefited from the rule being applied the way it is, so all U.S. fans will have to live with the game vs. Mexico being a straight-up win-and-in affair.
Taehan-min'guk
Daehan Minguk or 대한 민국
http://www.wordwebonline.com/en/DAEHANMINGOOK
"An Asian peninsula (off Manchuria) separating the Yellow Sea and the East Sea; the Korean name is Dae-Han-Min-Gook or Han-Gook"
Then I walked across and went to California Adventure and rode Soaring Over California and then went to the game.
I have an annual pass, so this was not an extravagance on my part.
Dae Han Min Gook is equivalent to chanting "U.S.A.!" because it is the official name of the Republic of Korea.
Dae = Great
Han = Cultural reference to Koreans (e.g., Han River runs through Seoul)
Min = People
Gook = Country (US is Meegook or beautiful country -- notice how so many Korean female names have Mee/Mi in them or Chinese females have Mei in their names, it's the same Chinese character for beautiful, China is Joonggook or middle country)
Hence, Republic of the People of the Han or Republic of Korea.
You'll also see references to Pilseung Korea, which means "Victory Korea"
The Han in Han River means "a body of water," and it also has a secondary meaning of the Chinese Han people. The Chinese use this make the claim that Korea was founded by Chinese...which Koreans dispute.
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