Israel's national baseball team on Tuesday beat Taiwan in a 15-7 drubbing, giving the team its second victory in as many games and greatly improving its chances of advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic. On Monday, in Seoul, the boys in blue and white spoiled the opening night party for South Korea, upsetting the hosts 2-1 in extra innings. After leaving the bases loaded in both the seventh and eighth innings, Israel finally broke the 1-1 tie on Scott Burcham's infield single in the top of the 10th off former Major League Baseball reliever Lim Chang-yong. For Israel, playing with a squad of former major and minor league players who do not live in Israel, do not speak Hebrew, and visited the country only recently, it was a rousing result, as Israel was the last nation to join the 16-team tournament, with a qualifying round win over Britain last September. It was a tough loss for South Korea, which reached the semifinals and finals in the first two editions (2006, 2009) of the WBC and was playing in front of a noisy crowd of more than 15,000 at Gocheok Sky Dome. Slugger Ike Davis started the game-winning rally with a leadoff walk and one out later lumbered to third on a single by Ryan Lavarnway. With two outs, Burcham chopped a grounder up the middle for an infield single that scored pinch runner Mike Meyers for the winning run. Josh Zeid went three innings, striking out power hitter Lee Dae-ho to notch the win. Zeid gave up one hit, struck out four and threw 49 pitches, one less than the limit of 50 that would have forced him to miss the rest of the first round of Pool A play. In the second game of the Pool A doubleheader on Tuesday, South Korea was to face the Netherlands. Japan hosts Cuba on Tuesday to launch Pool B play in Tokyo. Pool C gets underway in Miami on Thursday with defending champions Dominican Republic playing Canada, while Pool D begins with Mexico hosting Italy in Guadalajara.
