World Cup - Day 16 - vs Netherlands

Today we played the Netherlands, well I can't say played since the game isn't over yet, so I guess I should say today we were playing the Netherlands until rain decided to ruin our parade. Today's game was a good old fashioned pitching duel with the dutch starter going 6 1/3 innings for 1 run, and our own Dushan Ruzic tossed 6 innings for 1 run. Midway through the 7th inning the heavens opened up once again in Panama and the tarp was on the field. Like most rain delays here we were expecting to be back on the field within 30 minutes but that wasn't the case today. We spent 2 1/2 hours in the clubhouse waiting for the rain to stop, but it didn't and they eventually suspended the game. So instead of talking about the game, I'll talk about what activities we got up to in the clubhouse.

First of all, as soon as they pulled the tarps on, everyone got their iPods, iPads and iPhones out to get on the internet but that was an epic fail activity as the wi-fi in the clubhouse wasn't working too well, maybe because 25 people were trying to log in at one time. I was able to get wi-fi for a little bit, but it was very frustrating so I decided to find a corner somewhere in the clubhouse and take a nap. Once I woke up from my glorious nap I  just lurked around the clubhouse for something to do and found myself in the batting cages behind the clubhouse. So what's more Aussie then getting a baseball bat, and playing some cricket while at a baseball game? We played for about 20 minutes before we decided to call it quits. I think Hayden Beard was scared I would embarrass him with my spin bowling. Once all that was done we sat around for another 50 minutes with nothing happening as the rain continued and then around 7:45pm they decided to suspend the game and make us finish it off tomorrow. We waited around all that time just to tell us the game would be suspended. I don't know how to read a weather radar, but even I could of told you just by looking at the sky that the rain wasn't going to stop for a few hours.

The waiting didn't stop there. As soon as the game got suspended two players had to be drug tested and well, we had to wait another hour for Hayden Beard to do his business. Didn't bother us as we started watching a movie on the bus that kept us entertained. As soon as Hayden got back on the bus he received a large round of applause from the team.

Once we got back to the hotel we had to sit around and wait to see what was going to happen with the upcoming schedule. We found out later on in the night that we will play the USA at 12:00pm tomorrow in a 7 inning game, then complete the game against the Netherlands at 3:30pm. We will then have to travel 4 hours to Panama City, where we will be playing Panama at 11:00am tomorrow morning. The next 36 hours are going to be big, but we're up to the task and have a real chance of playing in the gold medal game in two days.

Relaxing in the dugout, about 2 hours into the rain delay