A brilliant pitching performance by Hayato Arakaki and self-inflicted wounds in the fourth inning ended Team Canada's bid for gold at the World Baseball Challenge.
In a Saturday afternoon playoff game at Citizen Field, Toshiba-Japan beat Canada 4-1 in front of 850 fans. Arakaki, a crafty right-hander, threw 121 pitches over the course of nine innings and was just as strong at the end of the contest as he was at the start. Using a fastball, a cruel curve ball and a split-fingered change-up, he produced countless ground-ball outs and finished with nine strikeouts. The only Canadian batter to get to him was Mark Ellis, who led off the top of the eighth inning with a home run to left field.
"Their pitcher had his best stuff," Ellis said. "We had a hard time jumping on his fastball and his off-speed stuff was working good. And they took advantage of our mistakes. We gave them a couple of openings and we weren't able to jump on their mistakes."
At the time of Ellis's homer, Toshiba-Japan had already scored four runs, three of them in the bottom of the fourth inning. In that frame, Canada committed two costly errors, one by shortstop Jared Johnson that allowed leadoff batter Ryoichi Adachi to reach first base, and the other on a Ryuta Matsunaga fly ball to shallow centre field that dropped between three Canadian players. The next batter, Masato Ohkawara, cracked a two-RBI single to right field and later scored on a single by Shoto Fujiwara.
The damage was done and Canada never recovered.
The fly ball that hit green space in centre was a case of nobody taking charge of the play.
"It was a miscommunication between Mark [second baseman Ellis] and myself and Wally [right fielder Greg Wallace]," Head said. "I probably should have called for it right away. They took advantage of it -- they jumped on it and scored some runs on it."
With two out in the bottom of the ninth, Canada did make some noise when Colin Moro and Greg Wallace smacked consecutive singles to left field. Up came Kevin Atkinson, who represented the tying run, and he ripped a ball back up the left side of the diamond that looked like it was destined for the outfield grass. But Adachi, the Toshiba-Japan shortstop, must have been wearing anti-gravity shoes because he leaped impossibly high in the air and came down with the prize.
"We played our hearts out and the shortstop made a nice play to end the game," Ellis said.
Shawn Schaefer, who surrendered four hits in five innings of work, took the loss for Canada. He was relieved by Greg Byron and Jordy Alexander.
Canada, with an overall record of 3-3, finished fourth in the six-team event.
"Of course we wanted to win it all -- that was the whole idea of us getting together and coming here, but we did very well," Head said. "Those guys [on the other teams] are all borderline professionals but we carried our weight. [Fourth] is not the ultimate goal but I'm certainly not disappointed. I was thankful for the opportunity and glad to be here -- glad to represent Canada."
Canada started the tournament with wins against the Bahamas (13-7) and the Beijing Tigers (6-2) and then lost games to Cuba (9-4) and Toshiba Japan (14-3). In their first playoff game, on Friday, the Canadians downed the Bahamas 13-1.
