#122---Australia v. Mexico, 3/8/2009 (World Baseball Classic)

This was the opening game of the WBC for each country, with the game being played in Mexico City. The result was fairly surprising, as Australia is on the lower end of the WBC spectrum (albeit boasting a handful of current/future major leaguers including Trent Oetljen, Chris Snelling, Damian Moss, Liam Hendriks, Justin Huber on their roster) while Mexico has more talent by any measure (the Hairston and Gonzalez brothers make up 4/9 of the starting lineup).

But they also had their ace, Oliver Perez on the mound, and to the surprise and dismay of Mets fans everywhere, that didn’t go so well. Perez surrendered back-to-back homers in the first, gave up another run in the second leaving the bases loaded, and walk and hit the first two batters in the third before being reliever. But Mexico countered with a five-run first capped by Jorge Vazquez grand slam.

Mexico led 6-4 heading to the fifth and then the wheels fell off as Australia scored 3, 3, 4, and 3 in the remaining innings before it ended on the mercy rule, touching up a handful of major league hurlers in the process and getting a second homer from Chris Snelling.

A note on the scoresheet: this is my “mini” scoresheet, which actually provides space to score two games laid out landscape style on a single 8.5x11 sheet of paper. I cut this image down to just show the one game, but it is a sheet I use sometimes when I don’t want to record pitch-by-pitch detail and thus can make due with small scoreboxes.