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Australia v Dominican Republic

Thursday 9th March 2006

Australia proud of progress it's made
Young team has helped understanding of the game down under

Darlinghurst native Damian Moss, who starts for Australia,
has pitched for four Major League clubs

The Australian team won't be playing for a berth to Round 2 of the World Baseball Classic on Friday, but it has pride on the line, and that's plenty of motivation

A young Australian club lost to Italy and Venezuela in the first two games - in fact, the Aussies have yet to score in this tournament

However, Manager Jon Deeble is thrilled with the progress his players made, both for themselves, and for the overall perception of baseball in Australia
Next time, Deeble said, they'll be more competitive

"We've got a lot of young kids in professional baseball" Deeble said
"A lot of young rookie ball, A Ball players
The biggest thing for us, we didn't even have a league in Australia
The next thing for us is to have a professional league in Australia
These kids haven't played a baseball game since August
We can't get home after the professional season and play in a league
That's not available"

His goal is to push for a national league in Australia, where the sport can be more of a year-round game

"The opponents are out there throwing 96, 97mph" Deeble said
"We haven't seen live pitching since August of last year
That was tough"

Still, they're not done yet
They play the Dominican Republic at Disney's Wide World of Sports Friday night, and they'll be playing as hard as they would have if they still had a chance to advance

"It's like pitching during the season" said Damian Moss, Friday's starter
"You get eliminated from contention, you don't just give up
We're going to battle, fight
Just because we're out of it, we'd still like to try to upset somebody and come out with a win"

Although they didn't win either of their first two games, Moss is confident his Australian team will leave this tournament with more respect than when it began
"You look at the game against Italy, and you'd be like, 'We might be a little bit out of our element' Moss said
"On the other side, everybody knew it was a bad game for us
It probably didn't leave a good impression as far as baseball in Australia
Tonight was a huge step, that we are competitive"