Team Taiwan shut out Venezuela 3-0 in their third game of the women’s softball preliminaries at the Fengtai Softball Field last night.
Taiwan’s Wu Chia-yen pitched 4.1 innings for three hits and three strikeouts. Her compatriot Chueh Ming-hui had two strikeouts over 2.2 innings.
Earlier yesterday, thunderstorms suspended the US-Canada softball game yesterday at the Olympics, putting the Americans’ lengthy winning streak on hold for a day.
The US was trailing 1-0 in the fourth inning at Fengtai Softball Stadium. The teams will resume play today following the US-Japan game, which begins at noon local time.
Canada will play China earlier, and then will have to wait around to play the Americans, who have won 16 straight at the Olympics and are seeking their fourth gold medal in softball’s last swing in the Games until at least 2016.
After posting shutouts and no-hitters in its first two games in China, and blanking 10 of its past 11 opponents in the Olympics, the Americans found themselves in an unusual spot in the first inning: behind.
Following a bizarre inning that featured controversy and an error, the US trailed Canada 1-0, its first deficit since the gold-medal game at Sydney in 2000.
The Canadians scored a run without a hit when Monica Abbott was called for three illegal pitches by Italian third-base umpire Gianluca Magnani. He ruled that her left, push-off foot was not over the rubber when she began her delivery.
Abbott had retired leadoff hitter Melanie Matthews on a comebacker on her first pitch. But Magnani yelled “illegal pitch,” and Matthews was given another crack at the left-hander. She then hit a fly ball — Magnani called a second illegal pitch as Matthews connected — to deep center that Caitlin Lowe dropped.
If the illegal pitches weren’t strange enough, Lowe’s error was perhaps more bizarre. It was her first error in 123 games since joining the US team in 2005.
In yesterday’s other games, Australia (1-2) got its first win of the tournament, 3-1 over China (2-1).
In the evening session, Japan (3-0) stayed unbeaten with a 3-0 win over the Netherlands (0-3).
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