Lin Keh-chien pitched six shutout innings of five-hit ball and Lin Yi-chuen batted three-for-four with a pair of RBIs to lift the Sinon Bulls past the La New Bears 6-1 at Hsinchu Municipal Baseball Stadium on Friday evening.
The rookie tandem for the new-and-improved Bulls showed why they are the talk of the town, dominating the previously unbeaten Bears with a solid outing from Lin Keh-chien in his professional debut. Lin Yi-chuen connected for his ninth hit in just four games as the Bulls forced a tie with the Bears for the lead in the standings, both at 3-1 records.
The battle between the league’s top two squads saw the Bulls jump to a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the third. Wilton Veras drove in the first run with a crafty single to left off Bears starter Hsu Wen-hsiung before Lin Yi-chuen followed with a two-run triple.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Trailing 0-4 through the sixth, the Bears got a run back in the seventh when Tsang Chih-yao drew a leadoff walk off Bulls reliever Jiang Jien-ming and scored three batters later on Huang “Easy” Long-yi’s single to right.
That was as close as the Bears got as the Bulls answered with two more runs in the eighth to put the game away for good.
Lin Keh-chien was credited with the big “W” for his near-flawless performance while his counterpart Hsu suffered the tough loss, despite going seven strong innings with three earned runs (four allowed) in a quality start.
ELEPHANTS 7, LIONS 3
The Brother Elephants ended a two-game losing skid with a 7-3 win against the Uni-President Lions thanks to a great effort by starter Kobayashi Ryokan at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday night.
The Japanese native, who pitched the season opener against the Lions in a losing cause, managed to exact revenge by holding a potent Lions lineup to three runs on four hits over seven frames for his first win of the year.
The loss was the Lions’ fourth straight for the first time in nearly two years and ended starter Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen’s four-game winning streak against the Elephants.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier