After chalking up two wins on the opening weekend of the season, the Pattaya based Thai Tigers team was full of confidence going into week 2 of the prestigious BISL League in Bangkok. However, they did not expect an easy time as they were taking on last year’s One Pitch tournament co-champions MSport.
Before the game the Tigers received a setback as 4 of their starters were found to be carrying injuries, though this did not dampen the team’s self-belief and they began well by bringing the fight to the free slugging MSport, grabbing an early 2-1 lead after 2 innings.
The experience of the MSport players gradually kicked in however and they fast found the Tigers’ weak spots with well-placed hits through the depleted defense, jumping over the visitors 8-3 after 6 innings. As the top of the 7th, MSport scored one more run to make it 9-3 which prompted coach Young of the Tigers to ring the changes in his lineup, resulting in 5 base hits in a row and closing the gap to 9-6 and getting the tying run at the plate with no outs and runners on 1st and 2nd base.
Now running out of substitutes however, the Tigers offensive machine sputtered to a halt and they could not push any more runs across the plate, ending the game in a tough 9-6 loss.
Game 2 started with a team turned upside down to get some of the injured the deserved rest the craved for and coach Young started with 4 new faces in the side. It seemed to work well as the Tigers again came out steaming, grabbing a 4-1 early lead after the top of the 2nd inning, mainly through 2 monster ‘no doubt’ home runs from Toom Suratit and Pipo Engchuen.
This seemed to wake up the power house MSport team as they suddenly switched on their own offensive arsenal, hitting some timely bombs out of the park as the Tigers started to make errors and the visiting defense began to stutter.
At 15-4 in favour of the home team it was close to a mercy rule score and it was time once again for coach Young to make more changes, bringing back all his principle players (injured or not) into the lineup. The move worked and the Tigers scored 4 runs in the 6th, closing the gap to a more respectable 15-8.
At the top of the 7th it was all or nothing for the Tigers and again they seemed to pull that extra effort out of their hats, scoring 2 quick runs to reduce the deficit to just 5. The team manager called for one more big effort and with 3 more hits loading up the bases for powerful hitter Toom Suratit it looked like the impossible might just become possible, but a good defensive stop up the middle ended the Pattaya team’s hopes of a dramatic come-back, effectively ending the game with a final score of 15-10 to MSport.
The team will have a chance to recover from all their niggling injuries as they have a bye next week in the BISL League.
If you would like to get involved in some fun baseball or softball in Pattaya, contact Dirk at [email protected]. Alternatively you can drop by team sponsor Fraser’s Sports Bar and Restaurant and ask Stewart on how to find the Tigers. The bar can be found on Thappraya Road in Jomtien.
