S Korea crush Venezuela

LOS ANGELES: Olympic champions South Korea struck early in a 10-2 blowout over Venezuela on Saturday to reach the final of the World Baseball Classic (WBC).

The Koreans scored five runs in the first inning and tacked on two more in the second to set up a title clash with the winner of Sunday's semifinal between the United States and Japan.

Outfielder Choo Shin-soo of the Cleveland Indians belted a three-run homer to highlight South Korea's first-inning outburst.

Last year's Beijing Olympic gold medalists sent 10 batters to the plate in the inning, the first four batters reaching base in an electrifying start.

Venezuela made two costly errors in the inning, including a dropped fly ball by Bobby Abreu.

"We won today and we did not expect to win," South Korea coach Kim In-sik told reporters. "But of course our win was aided by errors from our oponents. That was a big factor too."

Missing key members from their triumphant Beijing side, the Koreans tagged Venezuela's Seattle Mariners pitcher Carlos Silva with seven runs and six hits in just one and a third innings.

Kim Tae-kyun also homered off Silva, going deep with a two-run blast in the second inning, and admitted afterwards a scouting report by Choo had helped.

"Shin-Soo knew about the pitcher and we talked about it a lot," he said. "We expected a lot of sinkers would be thrown and were ready for them."

Yoon Suk-min pitched six-plus solid innings for the win, giving up seven hits and two runs while striking out four and walking just one Venezuelan batter.

The right-hander gave up runs in the third and seventh innings with Carlos Guillen of the Detroit Tigers smacking a solo homer in the seventh.

South Korea scored a solo run in the fourth on a botched pickoff attempt and two more in the sixth inning on an RBI single by Lee Dae-ho and Choi Jeong's sacrifice fly.

Reuters

(China Daily 03/23/2009 page11)