Bonehead Baseball Diplomacy : Foul-Up Results in U.S. JC Team Playing Taiwan Olympians

Call it a breakdown in international communication.

The victims: An all-star team of community college-level baseball players, who, through no fault of their own, traveled 7,000 miles to get routed by a team they had no business being on the same field with.

Ted Henkel, coach of the Antelope Valley baseball team, thought he was taking a 20-man team to Taiwan to play a six-game series against other teams consisting of college-age players.

At least that’s what Sports Development USA, the international amateur sports organization that arranged the trip, had told him.

But as he gathered up his team at Los Angeles International Airport two weeks ago, Henkel found out otherwise.

There had been a misunderstanding.

His team would not be matched against six different all-star teams as had been planned. Instead, they would be matched in a three-game series against the Taiwanese Olympic team--the same team that won a bronze medal in Los Angeles last summer.

The results were not surprising. Henkel’s team was defeated by scores of 10-0, 14-3 and 16-0 before a total of about 27,000 fans.

Said Henkel: “I had no idea we would be playing their Olympic team. We got a chance to play against some very talented ballplayers.”

They also went up against some biased umpiring, according to Henkel. “You could say there was a definite change in the way they called strikes over there,” he said. “Our strike zone was like an aspirin tablet. Theirs was anything close.”

Henkel said his team didn’t play as poorly as the scores would indicate.

“We were keeping up with them in most cases, but whenever it looked as though we would make a move, the umpires would take the bats out of our hands,” he said. “We struck out a total of 36 times in the three games. They only struck out seven times. Our pitchers weren’t that bad.”

Henkel’s team included Tim Nelson and Bob Ayrault from Moorpark College. Nelson was the starting pitcher in the first game and allowed only three hits and one run in three innings of work. He also played some outfield and got one hit and two at-bats.

Sports Development USA supplied most of the equipment, but each player had to come up with $1,495 to cover hotel and travel arrangements for the trip. That’s some big money to go over and suffer lopsided losses, but Henkel said the trip had its fun moments and that the experience was good for his players.

When the teams weren’t playing, the Americans were given the red-carpet treatment--complete with tours, banquets and barbecues. And on the way home, they spent two days in Hawaii.

It was almost enough to make a player forget the scores of the games.