Men's Baseball WBSC African/European Olympic Games Qualification Tournament 2019

[Gianlu33 4,499]

A total disaster... At last the final fight was nice

[phelps 7,628]

the best case scenario for ITA would surely be ITA beating the NED, ISR losing (big) vs RSA and CZE beating ESP...

a messy 4-way tie with ITA, ISR, NED and CZE all with a 3-2 record...

[phelps 7,628]

ISR vs RSA also rescheduled for noon CET tomorrow...

 

ESP vs CZE is still without an official start time...probably it will be played only if it's going to have an influence on the final ranking of the tournament after the other 2 games to be played tomorrow at lunch time are over...

[Olympian1010 7,935]

1 hour ago, NearPup said:

Baseball fights are the most ridiculous thing in sport.

And now I’ll watch that game 

[Orisek 13]

Any chances for CZE to finish first? Or we can play only for second now?

[Dunadan 1,103]

17 minutes ago, Orisek said:

Any chances for CZE to finish first? Or we can play only for second now?

 

No chance to finish first.

Second place is possible if Israel lose to South Africa and Netherlands win against Italy.

[rajiv 31]

Well if we end up with a team composed of Americans who happen to be Jewish taking up one of only six Olympic quotas  in baseball I'd say this would be a public relations disaster for those arguing for the  ongoing inclusion of baseball in the Olympics .

The big question is how many of the team learnt the sport in Israel ?

 

I remember that there was a story that Greece toyed with the idea of fielding a ( field ) hockey team comprised of persons from the Greek diaspora who knew the game ( which is largely unknown in Greece ) for Athens 2004,

Fortunately it went nowhere . Somebody will always throw these ideas up, They should be ignored for the integrity of sport 

[dcro 10,210]

Just now, rajiv said:

Well if we end up with a team composed of Americans who happen to be Jewish taking up one of only six Olympic quotas  in baseball I'd say this would be a public relations disaster for those arguing for the  ongoing inclusion of baseball in the Olympics .

The big question is how many of the team learnt the sport in Israel ?

 

I remember that there was a story that Greece toyed with the idea of fielding a ( field ) hockey team comprised of persons from the Greek diaspora who knew the game ( which is largely unknown in Greece ) for Athens 2004,

Fortunately it went nowhere . Somebody will always throw these ideas up, They should be ignored for the integrity of sport 

 

Italy pretty much has just as many Italian-Americans on the team, and even Venezuelans, but I guess Israel is easy to hate (as always).

[phelps 7,628]

1 hour ago, rajiv said:

Well if we end up with a team composed of Americans who happen to be Jewish taking up one of only six Olympic quotas  in baseball I'd say this would be a public relations disaster for those arguing for the  ongoing inclusion of baseball in the Olympics .

The big question is how many of the team learnt the sport in Israel ?

 

I remember that there was a story that Greece toyed with the idea of fielding a ( field ) hockey team comprised of persons from the Greek diaspora who knew the game ( which is largely unknown in Greece ) for Athens 2004,

Fortunately it went nowhere . Somebody will always throw these ideas up, They should be ignored for the integrity of sport 

 

well, the Greeks in 2004 did that in Baseball and Softball (and normally they have a high rate of naturalized athletes in all the combat sports -and even in Basketball, which is supposed to be their most beloved national discipline after football)...

so, it would have been nothing strange nor new to them...

 

in any case, you have to make a difference between naturalized athletes (sometimes ligitimately, sometimes just bought by the various Countries) and those with the heritage of a certain Nation...

 

those people are actually Greeks rather than Italians rather than from any other Country in the world...

 

their blood is from their respective Nation...

 

and this is a way stronger connection with said Nations than the always fashionable ius soli, which in most cases doesn't mean anything, just a mere stay in a place you don't even like or understand or respect in all of its cultural and social expressions...only because it's economically convenient...

 

taking advantage of the Countrymen/women of the Diaspora is absolutely fair to me, it's a Nation's richness that they have all the moral, ethical and legal rights to take advantage of...

I have no complaints at all if a Country wins tons of medals thanks to their men/women who have found better conditions to live and practice sport in another place but then finally choose to represent the Country of their hearts, of their Fathers, of their Grannies and so on...

[AmericanHero40 192]

1 hour ago, rajiv said:

Well if we end up with a team composed of Americans who happen to be Jewish taking up one of only six Olympic quotas  in baseball I'd say this would be a public relations disaster for those arguing for the  ongoing inclusion of baseball in the Olympics .

The big question is how many of the team learnt the sport in Israel ?

 

I remember that there was a story that Greece toyed with the idea of fielding a ( field ) hockey team comprised of persons from the Greek diaspora who knew the game ( which is largely unknown in Greece ) for Athens 2004,

Fortunately it went nowhere . Somebody will always throw these ideas up, They should be ignored for the integrity of sport 

 

The answer is 0, but how exactly is it different with Chinese table tennis players playing for every possible country, there are were way more then 3 chinese table tennis players. And what about Qatar and their handball team? there are plenty of examples of athletes who go on to represent another country , if we stop israel we should stop everyone.