It's now official.
Team Canada will not win the World Baseball Challenge.
Heck, they might not even win a game as the host team of the five-team tournament. But they came awful close Wednesday afternoon, taking 500 spectators on a roller-coaster ride that ended in an 8-6 loss to JX-Eneos of Japan.
But winning isn't everything and the guys wearing Canada's flag are still just happy to be here representing their country. That sentiment carried through as they packed the gear and left the field after yet another loss.
"This definitely was our best effort of the tournament so far, just one bad inning and that pretty much did us in," said Team Canada's 30-year-old shortstop Rob Recuendo of Vancouver. "This is my actually my third time here [at the WBC] so any time I get a chance to play against international competition like this, I'm jumping at it. For the younger guys it's something for them to take back to college and it's been a great learning experience for them."
Starting pitcher Kyle McKay, a 22-year-old from King City. Ont., is getting schooled in his first international tournament and he gave Canada a great chance to pick up its first win, scattering seven hits over seven innings with four strikeouts and three walked batters.
"They're a good team and you have to keep them off-balance to beat them and we got down but kept battling and almost pulled it off," said McKay. "I'm just honoured to be here. I never saw my summer going back to school [in St. Francis, Ind.] ending like this. It's a different experience playing people from the other side of the world. It's a once-in-lifetime experience representing your country.'
After Canada had scored four runs on four hits to pull ahead 4-3 in the eighth inning, the first lead of the tournament in six games for Canada, Japan stuck a pin in that balloon with a five-run bottom half of the eighth that doomed the home team's celebration plans.
The win improved Japan's third-place record to 3-3.
The downward slide for Canada started in the eighth when Graham Allard came in to replace McKay and walked Kentaro Miyazawa. Eric Hall replaced Allard and Daisuke Ishii bunted Miyazawa to second, who then advanced on a wild pitch. On the next play Manataka Ikyo tried a squeeze play to try to score Tabata but Larry Balkwill raced in and threw a perfect strike to Brookyn Foster to get the second out. But Japan had more trouble in store.
Shuya Tabata hit one off Balkwill's glove into shallow right field, which scored Takahashi from second. Homebrew lefthander Curtis Sawchuk came in to pitch and struggled to find his control. A wild pitch allowed Kimio Watanabe to score the go-ahead run and with two runners on Naoki Yamaguchi knocked Japan's first home run of the tournament into right field.
Canada fired back with two runs in the ninth as a result of Recuendo's double, but they couldn't get anything more out of closer Shota Eguchi.
"It was a little disheartening at the end but we kept on battling, trying to scrape together runs and trying to do what we can," said Charlie Strandland, Canada's designated hitter.
"There are a lot of good teams and its tough to get the runs we need. We haven't had much luck go our way and haven't had the dribblers get through and we need some of them. These are all professional hitters and you can't put in on our pitchers, they're doing a great job on these hitters. Everybody's working hard to do good things for Canada."
Jared Johnson cued Canada's comeback kin the eighth with a single and Recuendo followed up with a base hit of his own to get Johnson to third. That brought Strandland, a three-time WBC veteran, to the plate and the 30-year-old from Victoria delivered with a two-run double that landed in the right field corner. Aaron Dunsmore did his part to tie it up with a triple off Masato Komuro to right field, just beating the tag. With reliever Ryoji Ohtsuka in the game, Dunsmore stole home when the ball got away from catcher Hidefumi Kashiwagi, whose toss to home plate was dropped by Ohtsuka.
After playing error-free the previous game against the U.S. Canada's defensive woes came back to haunt them for two unearned runs in the fifth inning. With one out, Tabata singled, stole second and moved to third when catcher Brooklyn Foster's throw to second based bounced into the outfield. Tabata scored the first run on an infield hit that deflected off the glove of pitcher Kyle McKay. Toshiki Yamada's ground-out advanced the runners and designated hitter Keiji Ikede brought them home with a fly ball that bounced off the glove of left fielder Johnson, who might have been fooled by the swirling winds that buffeted the outfield.
Canada (0-6) has one game left today at 3 p.m. against the United States (2-4). Team USA's only wins have come at Canada's expense.
