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For the first time in over four years, Team Australia will play a significant baseball game at home.

The Australian senior men’s national team will take on top level Korean club Hanwha Eagles in a two-game series from February 17-18, 2024 at Melbourne Ballpark.

Ticket Information

Saturday 17th Feb 2024
Game 1 tickets

Sunday 18th Feb 2024
Game 2 Tickets

The event is dubbed ‘The International Baseball Showdown’ and is proudly supported by the Victorian Government and hosted by the Melbourne Aces. It gives Australian baseball fans a rare opportunity to see their team play on home soil, and players a chance to wear the Green & Gold in front of family.

The senior men’s national team last played in Australia vs the Doosan Bears in Geelong, but only one game occurred after rain washed out the rest of the scheduled series. 

The national team also played in Sydney in 2016 for the World Baseball Classic qualifiers, and at the SCG for the MLB Opening Day series in 2014. Outside of the ABL All-Star Game, which only included Australians who played in the league and ended in 2017, opportunities to play at home are few and far between. 

Justin Huber says the chance to wear the jersey in front of family & friends is special.

“As an Australian professional and national team player, you’re usually resigned to the fact that your career is going to be played overseas,” he says. “To represent your country at home, in front of home fans, at an international level is the stuff of childhood dreams.”

Australian players returned home from the Asia Professional Baseball Championships in Tokyo this week, where they won the hearts of the Japanese public.

In February, their opponent will come from the Korean Baseball Organisation (KBO) – widely considered the third best competition in the world. The KBO is played in front of tens of thousands of fans and broadcast to huge domestic audiences. In Korea, baseball is king.

The Eagles are home to current KBO home run champion Roh Sihwan, who bashed 31 homers and 101 RBI this season.

The Eagles will be in Melbourne throughout February for ‘Spring Training’ – a month-lng camp to prepare for the 2024 KBO season. The Aces and Melbourne Ballpark, with support from the Victorian state government, are hosting the pre-season activity. 

Korea – and the Eagles – links to Australia are strong. Team Australia co-captain and former MLB pitcher Warwick Saupold played for Hanwha Eagles for two seasons in 2019-2020.

Three other KBO clubs are sending players to compete in the upcoming Australian Baseball League.

The Hanwha Corporation is South Korea’s largest defense company with a strong relationship with the Australian and Victorian governments. Hanwha Defense Australia has headquarters in Melbourne CBD and the Greater Geelong area. While operated separately, Hanwha owns the baseball team too.  

For more information and to view the Melbourne Aces’ official release, please click here.

Ticket Information

Saturday 19th Feb 2024
Game 1 tickets

Sunday 18th Feb 2024
Game 2 Tickets

When Australia won the Cricket World Cup on Sunday night, the national body tweeted it.

The post on X (formerly twitter) had 2.5 million views at the time of this article. Those are big numbers and they should be – it doesn’t get much bigger for Australia’s #1 sport.

Had it attracted two million more views, it still would not have surpassed the views of a tweet by Team Australia baseball on the same day.

It wouldn’t even have the same views as a Chris Burke RBI single.

MORE TO COME – story by Eric Balnar

A plucky effort. A heartbreaking loss. An incredible, surreal experience at the Tokyo Dome.

Australia showed they are strongly in the conversation when it comes to competing with international baseball powerhouses. They just haven’t figured out how to control the chat.

Team Australia suffered a third agonising defeat in four days at the Asia Professional Baseball Championships against a top-ranked team. This time, to world #5 Chinese Taipei in the bronze medal game.

CPBL All-Star centrefielder Tien Tsin Kuo had a walk-off RBI single in the ninth inning to win it 4-3 for the proud Taiwanese baseball national.

Other tight losses include extra innings defeats to Korea (World #4) on Thursday, and Taiwan again on Friday.

What happened off the field is almost as exciting as what happened on the field.

Australia trailed 3-0 but they sparked a rally to tie the game late. The Japanese fans greatly assisted with that effort in a “you have to see it to believe it moment.”

Team Australia has gone viral in Japan in recent days. The Aussie baseballers struggle to find any space in media outlets at home, but in Japan they’ve been headline news in every format. Some tweets have over one-million views including a plea for support at the game.

Japanese people formed a cheer section down the left field line, singing traditional baseball cheer songs for their second favourite baseball team – the boys in the green & gold.

This wasn’t just lazy cheering – they were singing, clapping, chanting and dancing Australia on. They were throwing out joyful chorus for Australia like it was their hometown team. The newly formed ‘Kangaroo Club’ was invested.

The support built at exactly the right time. Australia had just made a mess of the third inning.

An infield hit, a walk, an error, a hit-by-pitch and a botched double-play attempt put a crooked ‘three’ on the scoreboard for Chinese Taipei. In international baseball, teams can ill afford a lapse like that.

Australia didn’t quit. In the next half inning, Alex Hall reached on a single. The newly dubbed ‘Kangaroo Club’ of frenetic Japanese supporters rained down support on Chris Burke.

He delivered an RBI double to put Australia on the board.

Just watch.

Australia started the game with Sam Holland, Dan McGrath and Kai-Noa Wynyard on the mound. They turned it over to Coen Wynne.

He was brilliant. The returning World Baseball Classic pitcher held his nerve. He threw a perfect fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth inning – no walks, no hits, no runs.

As any good pitcher needs, Wynne benefited from superb defense.

His stone-cold performance allowed Australia to hang tough and wait for a time to strike.

The moment was the seventh inning.

New Japanese fan favourite Chris Burke knocked a deep RBI-double off the wall. Mitch Edwards legged out an infield hit. Luke Smith had a gutsy pinch-hit single to load the bases.

With two outs, Liam Spence hung tough. He fouled off multiple pitches and waited for one he liked.

He got it. Tie ball-game.

Unfortunately, the seemingly red-hot bats, which collected seven hits in the middle innings, dried up.

Chinese Taipei pitching needed just 11 pitches to retire the final six Australian outs.

Cheng-Yu Chang, the gun shortstop for the newly ordained CPBL champion Dragons side, broke up Coen Wynne’s perfect relief appearance in the bottom of the ninth. He was advanced on a bunt.

Two- CPBL All-Star Tien Hsin Kuo cashed him in on a heartbreaking hit to right-field.

A heartbreaking end. Close.

Players will return to Australia for the ABL season.

BOX SCORE

A young Australian national team learned why Japan is the best in the world.

Samurai Japan were brilliant in front of 40,000 boisterous fans at the Tokyo Dome. Fans were chanting, singing, jumping, and clapping all afternoon as the home side rolled to a complete 10-0 victory to finish the group stage 3-0.

They’ll play in the gold medal game tomorrow evening. Australia will play for bronze at 11:00AM AEDT.
Japan were relentless in three phases of the operation – the pitching, the hitting, and the crowd.

Japan had 13 hits and 23 baserunners. Eight different players recorded a hit. Kodai Fujiwara was excellent as the lead-off man, collecting three base knocks. Kaito Kozono – an NPB All-Star and arguably Japan’s best player – had three RBI. Mannami Chusei had two hits including a triple that electrified the crowd.

To be fair, this line-up is laced with talent. There are five players who are NPB All-Stars.

Japan’s Three Japanese pitchers combined to take a perfect game deep into the seventh inning. Walks to Rixon Wingrove and Alex Hall, followed by a single to Clayton Campbell, broke up the perfect game and no-hitter attempt.

Those were the only base runners Australia had the entire game – and since the fifth inning of yesterday’s narrow extra-innings defeat.
The feverish environment is something young players will have to get used to. Even as a spectator, it is intense.

For Dave Nilsson, it’s a learning experience.

“It’s a pretty overwhelming experience. Part of the process of us becoming a better tournament team is our players coming here to experience things,” he says. “The only way you learn is by being out there.”

BOX SCORE: Click here (and click translate)

Extra-innings have not been kind to the Green & Gold at the Asia Professional Baseball Championships.

Chinese Taipei scored all of their runs in the tiebreaker during a 6-0 win on Friday afternoon, just a day after Australia fell in extra-innings to Korea.
It was scoreless through nine. Both team’s pitching staffs were firing.

Six Australian pitchers pitched a combined shutout, allowing just seven hits between them all.

BOX SCORE: Chinese Taipei vs Australia.

Unfortunately for the Aussie arms, their Taiwanese counterparts returned serve, holding Australia scoreless through ten and without a hit since the third inning.

It set the stage for a monster extra-innings for Chinese Taipei. After a throwing error loaded the bases, 5x Chinese Professional Baseball League All-Star Chieh-Hsien Chen knocked in a pair of runs on a ground ball up the middle.

A few batters later, with the bases still loaded and two outs, CPBL All-Star Ching-Kai Lin launched a grand slam to deep left field to slam the door on Australian hopes.

Australia couldn’t issue a response in their half of the tenth innings.

On the bright side, Ky Hampton, Kai-Noa-Wynward, Billy Parsons, Matt Beattie, Will Sherriff and Dylan Clarke combined for nine innings of shut-out baseball. They were excellent. They weren’t pressured much. When they were, they held their nerve.

Just look at youngster Dylan Clarke, who induced a strike-out and a flyball to escape a runner-on-second, one out, situation.

On the down side, Australian bats were cold. Their best opportunity came in the first inning when Alex Hall stepped up to the plate with two runners on and one out. He grounded in to a double play.

From that point on, 26 of the next 28 batters were sat down, including the last eighteen. The two base runners? A hit-by-pitch in the fifth on Clayton Campbell and a single from Mitch Edwards in the third. Edwards was tagged out trying to steal second.

Lots of credit must be handed to Taiwanese starting pitcher Ko-Yi Chen. He pitched 7.0 innings, striking out six and allowing just two hits in the shutout effort.

Australia had a few fantastic defensive plays, including an Aaron Whitefield catch in centrefield crashing in to the wall, and a Rixon Wingrove trap at first to save a run.

Australia’s attention turns to hosts Japan tomorrow afternoon in front of a raucous atmosphere.

story by Eric Balnar / videos by Scott Powick

One team ends in heartbreak, the other in jubilation.

Back in March at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Australia sent shockwaves around the tournament when they upset betting odds favourite Korea 8-7 at the Tokyo Dome in what was one of the games of the global event.

On that occasion, Australia was elated while baseball giant Korea were left stunned.

Thursday afternoon, in the opening game of the Asia Professional Baseball Championship, South Korea exacted a tiny bit of revenge.

Their 3-2 come-from-behind extra-innings victory was the latest chapter in what is becoming a tantalizing international baseball rivalry.

Australia had a narrow 2-1 lead with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, when Korea’s #9 hitter Ju Won Kim tied the game.

Korean superstar Roh Si Hwan – who led the Korean Major Leagues in home runs this year – provided the game-winning hit for Korea to propel his team to a come-from-behind tiebreaker win.

Ecstasy for the millions of Koreans at home and despair for a tight-knit Australian community at home.

WATCH THE REPLAY ON BASEBALL PLUS

But one thing is for sure – the first game of the Asia Professional Baseball Championships was an instant classic, layered with drama and laced with golden opportunities for both sides.

Both teams seemed to subscribe to boxing great Muhammed Ali’s famous “rope-d-dope” tactic, a “bend but don’t break” attitude or Patches O’Houlihan’s “dodge, duck, dive and…dodge” strategy.

There was scoring chance, after scoring chance, after scoring chance. There just wasn’t a lot of runs.

Korea pressured early. In the end, they stranded 13 base runners of their own, including a stretch of four innings where they left nine on.

Australia left 14 runners on base during the game, including seven in the last four innings.

Clutch moments from Australian pitching looks like a laundry list:
– 2nd inning: Brodie Cooper-Vassalakis escapes a bases-loaded, one out jam
– 3rd inning: Coen Wynne (above) wriggles out of two-on, no-out situation
– 4th inning: Coen Wynne strikes out batter with runner on second
– 5th inning: Sam Holland evades scary two-on, one-out dynamic
– 7th inning: Dan McGrath comes in game, induces inning ending double play
– 8th inning: Dan McGrath picks off runner at first

In the middle of all that, Alex Hall’s sixth inning homer put Australia up 2-1. It set the stage for another perceived potential upset over the Korean powerhouse.

Want more Team Australia stories from Tokyo? Click here.

After the homer, Australia started to turn the screws. It was Korea’s turn to get out of hairy situations. Australia loaded the bases with one out in the seventh and failed to score. In the ninth, they had two on and one-out with no runs. Korea held Australia scoreless off a wild double-play in extra innings with two on and no-out.

They also tagged out Australian runners trying to snag an extra base on two separate occasions to end innings.

Clutch Korean pitching gave the offense just enough moments to come through.

With two outs in the eighth inning, Korea finally broke through when Ju Won Kim levelled the score with a well-placed RBI single to right-field.

In the tenth inning, Chris Burke blasted a hard-hit ball off KBO All-Star closer Jung Hai-Young. Unfortunately, the ball smashed off the glove of the Korean third baseman, ricocheted off his face and landed at his feet. The fielder was able to pick up the ball, step on third for a force-out, and zip the ball to first for a double play.

Under an international rules tiebreaker, with runners on first and second, South Korea’s leading homerun man in the 2023 season stepped up to the plate. He knocked the game winner to right field to send Korean fans into ecstasy and leave Australia stunned.

Australia will play tomorrow at 12:00PM vs Chinese Taipei in a sudden must win game in the short tournament.

BOX SCORE: Australia vs Korea