{"id":45685,"date":"2025-07-10T08:43:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=45685"},"modified":"2025-07-10T08:43:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:43:59","slug":"day-2-player-of-the-day-bradley-ezekiel-canada-2025-wbsc-mens-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=45685","title":{"rendered":"Day 2 Player of the Day &#8211; Bradley Ezekiel, Canada &#8211; 2025 WBSC Men&#8217;s World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Very impressive performance by <strong>Bradley Ezekiel<\/strong> yesterday in Canada&#8217;s come-from-behind win over Venezuela.  Canada fell behind 9-5 after 5 innings, and could ill-afford to lose, as it would have eliminated them from Super Round qualification.  To start the 6th, Ezekiel hit a bomb to trim the lead by a run, to 9-6.  Canada rallied for two more in the inning but still trailed 9-8 headed into the 7th, with just three outs to go.  Having batted around in the 6th, you-know-who was leading off the 7th.   Ezekiel put the team on his back, homered again to tie the game at 9 and take the pressure off his teammates, who went on to score two more in the inning for the 11-9 win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clutch x 2, when Canada needed it most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More than Honorable Mention<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>While there is no honorable mention given for Player of the Day, certainly <strong>Blake Hunter<\/strong> would garner the award.  While <strong>Ezekiel<\/strong> homered twice in consecutive innings, all <strong>Hunter<\/strong> did was hit a 2 run homer in the second inning to start the scoring for Canada, and then in the crucial 7th inning, he followed Ezekiel&#8217;s second homer with a two-run double to break the tie and provide the 11-9 margin of victory.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5 hits between these two, <strong>Ezekiel and Hunter<\/strong>,  4 for extra bases, driving in 6 of the 11 runs, including the tying and go-ahead runs in the 7th.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">?? After a clutch performance, Bradley Ezekiel is our Player of the Day!<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SoftballWorldCupM?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SoftballWorldCupM<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/k7YXwWYeaC\">pic.twitter.com\/k7YXwWYeaC<\/a><\/p>&mdash; WBSC ?? (@WBSC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WBSC\/status\/1943192416888000523?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 10, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Very impressive performance by Bradley Ezekiel yesterday in Canada&#8217;s come-from-behind win over Venezuela. Canada fell behind 9-5 after 5 innings, and could ill-afford to lose, as it would have eliminated them from Super Round qualification. To start the 6th, Ezekiel hit a bomb to trim the lead by a run, to 9-6. Canada rallied for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28,19,82],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-canada","7":"category-featured","8":"category-players","9":"category-wbsc","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45686,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45685\/revisions\/45686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}