World Cup - Day 8 - vs Korea

The day started off a bad note as the lettering on our jerseys had been wiped off in the wash, so we will now be wearing our batting practice tops for the rest of the tournament. But as we came to terms that we will no longer be wearing our fresh white jersey or our green jersey, we realized we're Australians and we will look good wearing anything.

Since we had a night game today, we had the whole day to ourselves to do something so a few of us decided to check out the mall and waste a few hours doing some shopping. We arrived at the mall and from the outside it looked quite promising, but once we got inside, it was far from inspiring. There were not many shops and after about 10 minutes everyone had already done a lap of the mall and they saw nothing at all. So we ended up just having lunch at the mall then hopping back on the bus to the hotel. It ended up being an epic fail activity.

We got back to the hotel and I was actually exhausted from doing nothing so I went to my room and attempted to have a nap. The nap only lasted for about 20 minutes but I guess it gave me enough energy to make it through the day. We had lunch again at the hotel then we had enough time to go back to our rooms and relax before heading to the field.

We arrived at the field and went through the usual routine. Being a baseball player for a living, your life starts to feel like groundhog day. Before the game started we noticed an Australian flag in the crowd. We already have Justin Erasmus dad following us on tour, but he was joined by 5 other Aussies in the stands tonight which was quite a nice surprise. We played Korea today in what was a game we really needed to win. We went down 8-0 but the scoreboard once again did not reflect how hard we are playing. Clayton Tanner looked good tonight on the mound. His stuff was filthy but Korea got to him for 1 inning, and that's been the story so far this tournament for us. I'm sure its easy for everyone checking the updates online to see the scores and think we are playing badly but that is not the case. Our pitchers are battling out there, we fall into trouble from time to time which leads to a big inning but other then that we are pitching our butts off. Our defense has been outstanding, the hitters are having quality at bats, and hitting the ball hard but straight to gloves. We have had a few questionable calls go against us but that is out of our control. Like I said in my post yesterday, as long as we keep doing everything right, everything will fall into place and that will lead to a win.

Tomorrow we have a day off, and it will good for the team to get their minds of baseball for a day and just relax and hopefully get a chance to enjoy Panama for a day.

The small Aussie fan base in Panama