In 2002, the Turks came in 3rd place in a very soggy Jakarta tournament.  After a 5 year hiatus, the Turkeys returned to Jakarta last year coming in runners-up after a tough loss to the Singapore River Rats in the championship.  And finally this year, after 7 gruelling games under the sun, the Turks finally took home the President's Cup!

FRIDAY: The tournament did not start off in a good way:  Throw in a three week layoff from the conclusion of the HKSPSA season, an early Friday morning game, no chance for BP, half of your starting outfield arriving from the airport 10 minutes before the game, and a first game match-up against the Fatt Boyz/Guzzlers, and well...we didn't win.  The second game of the day had us facing Bangkok Tilac.  Unfortunately, the bats were still cold and with a couple of defensive miscues, we found ourselves on the short end of a 10-4 score and 0 - 2 record for the tournament.  But in the final game of the day, under the lights, the bats finally woke up, and in a big way as we thumped Santa Fe - Blok Mads, a local Jakarta team in a mercy.

SATURDAY: The Turkey gods gave us a little reprieve with our first game of the day at noon against the Shanghai Sons.  Despite giving up 4 runs in the top of the first, the Turks again rallied and put away Shanghai in the 5th with the second straight mercy.  Saturday afternoon saw us again facing Santa Fe - Blok Mads and the results were again the same, our third straight mercy.

SUNDAY: 9am is not usually a time when the Turkeys do well, but as we were facing the Singapore River Rats in the semifinals of the President's Cup, our brethren were equally crippled by the unseemly early start time.  The Turks jumped on the Rats early, putting up 9 runs in the 2nd inning in a game that again resulted in a mercy after 6 innings with the Turkeys on the right end of a 19 - 4 game.  Excellent pitching by Wayne Lau and solid defense by Chad "Big Country" Boyd kept the Rats bats in check.  At the plate, huge games all around, but of particular note was Ethan Farbman with a troika of triples and Matt "Tap Out" Terranova who went 3 for 4 with 4 runs scored.

The championship game found us up against Hauleien Taiwan.  While not a mercy, the Turkeys again triumphed by the score of 12 to 7.  Solid pitching again from Wayne, and at the plate, Eric Harrison had a monster home run to go along with 3 runs scored and Andy Hasbun who went 4 for 4 with a pair of doubles, a triple, and 4 runs scored.

Hong Kong’s ‘other’ team in this year’s Jakarta Tourney were the Razorbacks lead by Preston Powell and Clinton Davis.  Day 1 was tailor made for this upstart bunch as the Hogs opened the tourney with a 9-8 win over the Taipei Police Team.  Kurtis Sherwood was the first to put the Hogs on the board with a solo Home Run in the 3^rd.  Next, 8 of the 9 runs were scored with 2 outs in the bottom of the 5^th inning.  Tom Allen drove home the tying and go ahead runs with a 2 out double in this inning.  Preserving the win was Ken Clark’s smooth glove at 2^nd and Marc Hughes LCF.  Ryan Young also pitched very well.

In the 2^nd game of Day 1 the bats truly erupted for the Razorbacks.  The Hogs pounded the River Rats, scoring 32 runs on 37 hits.  Dan Ruzicka, Jeff Buhl, Kurt Sherwood, Chris Calvert, Ryan Young, Mike Flynn, Tim Donahue and Preston Powell all had 4 hits a piece in this game.  Jeff Buhl had 1 HR and the mercy was completed by a walk-off 2run HR by Tim Donahue. 

Spirits were high heading into game 3 against Santa Fe Blok Mads, a traditional Super team in Asian Tourneys.  Both the Blok Mads and Razorbacks traded runs early on and were tied up at 5 going into the 4^th inning when the Hog’s ‘Special Black bat’ broke off a Ken Clark single.   Just like that the hopes and dreams of several young Indonesian orphans dried up as the sticks suddenly went cold for the Hogs.  They would go on to strand 9 runners in this game after the Black Bat’s demise.  The Blok Mads ended up defeating the Hogs 15 – 5 putting a damper on an otherwise perfect day.

Day 2 for the Hogs began well as they opened up against another local team – Prembarkar. Unfortunately the bat curse was still in effect as our Hogs were only able to score a pedestrian 2 runs against this team… thus wasting fine defensive efforts in the field by Marc Hughes, Chris Calvert and Ken Clark.  Clark was the only player to have multiple hits in this game as well.  Final score 9-2 Prembarkars.

The Hogs finished up 2-2 in the round robin play and feared that the tough ending to round robin play would penalize them heading into the 2^nd Round.  However this was not the case as they ended up beating out the Prembarkars, River Rats and Taiwan Police in Run Differential to head into the ‘Super Bracket Championships’ as one of the top 4 teams in the tourney.  

But with such reward came an even bigger mountain to climb; Game 1 in the 2^nd round against a very good Fattboyz/Guzzler team.  The Fattboyz and Guzzlers always field good teams in tournaments, but this one might have been the best to date.  It featured 4 pro players from the States with the rest being top league players from Korea, Tokyo and Singapore.  In the last meeting between these 2 teams, the Razorbacks defeated these guys in Singapore back in 2007. However this time the Fatties would even the score by ripping off a mercy win against the Hogs.

Game 2 of the Super Division Championships pitted the Hogs against a much more manageable opponent – Tilac from Bangkok.  Tilac was a very good expat player team that featured players who could hit the ball to every field.  This spelled trouble for the Hogs who took the loss despite huge games at the plate from Marc Hughes and Jeff Buhl.  

Day 3 was a whirlwind for the Razorbacks who had to squeeze 2 games in the morning in time to catch their 3pm flight back to Hong Kong.  First game was a rematch against Santa Fe Block Mads in a 2-2 count game that ended with a 12-6 win for Santa Fe.  The Final game started literally 2 hours before the Hogs had to leave for the airport and it was a dandy.  Jeff Buhl had a HR on the big field and Marc Hughes also drove in 4 runs a piece.  Mike Flynn had a big game at the plate also, driving in 3 runs with a clutch 2 out triple in the bottom of the 6^th.  Tilac got things under control and shut down the Hogs hot bats who were threatening to win with runners on 2^nd and 3^rd at the bottom of the 7^th.  Final score: Tilac 19, Razorbacks 17.

Despite the dry hitting spells on the field, the Razorbacks were fairly pleased with their performance in this tourney.  In Manila they only won 1 game, lost 4 by 1 run each and in this next tourney they were able to play into the Super Bracket against some of the best teams in Asia.  Give these boys a few more tourneys playing together and you can expect these guys to bring home some more hardware to Hong Kong.

Congrats to Eric Harrison and Tim Donahue on being named to the All-Tournament Team.