After dropping game one of the three-game series against the President Lions 15-3 in Tainan on Thursday, the Brother Elephants got back on the winning track and finished off the week with two impressive wins against the hosting Lions by scores of 9-3 and 12-3.
The 12-3 win on Sunday clinched the series for the Elephants against the third-placed Lions. It was the third series in a row, and only the fourth series of the season that the slow-starting Elephants have taken.
The series began with Lions ace Joe Davenport taking the mound on Thursday in an attempt to stop his team's six-game losing streak. The right-hander from the US rose to the occasion and promptly responded with a three run, seven-inning effort en route to his league-leading eighth victory of the season. Led by second baseman Hiroaki Yoshimi's four-for-four performance, which included a pair of RBI's, the Lions offense piled on 15 runs by the end of the game.
That was all the offense that the Lions fans would see during the series, because the Elephants pitchers never gave up more than three runs per game in the next two contests.
Riding on the success of its outstanding pitching, the Elephants' bats came alive, knocking in 21 runs during the next two games. Elephants right fielder Peng Cheng-ming's (彭政閔) recent offensive surge (8-for-12 at the plate with 7 RBI's in the last three games), including a grand slam off struggling Lions starter Chen Yang-kai (陳揚凱) on Sunday night, earned him his second game-MVP honor of the week.
Bulls-whales showdown
The highly anticipated matchup between the league-leading Sinon Bulls and the ChinaTrust Whales finally lived up to its billing, after two easy Bulls victories earlier this week (6-3 on Tuesday and 13-6 on Wednesday).
Down two games to none in the four-game series, the Whales shutout a powerful Bulls lineup that featured the league's home run and RBI leader Chang Tai-shan (
Whales starter Maximo Rosa went the distance for his first shutout win of the season, while his counterpart Osvaldo Martinez pitched eight scoreless innings before giving up two runs in the top of the ninth in a losing effort.
Game four between the two teams in Tienmu ended in a 12-inning, one-all draw as the Whales once again matched the Bulls hit for hit and out for out. It was a moral victory for the Whales because four of its eight regular starting fielders were out of the lineup because of injuries.
"I give ourselves an 80 percent mark today," Whales manager Lin Chung-chiou (
The Makoto Gida snapped a four-game losing streak as they feasted off the First Securities Agan in Kaohsiung on Thursday in a 4-2 victory. Outhit by the Agan 6-to-8, the Gida relied on timely hits by the heart of the order -- Hsieh Jia-shian (
First baseman Hsieh Jia-shian got his team on the board with his fifth homer of the season in the fifth. The solo blast cleared the deep left fence off Agan starter Greg Bicknell. Down 2-1, Gida designated hitter Cheng came up huge by knocking a Bicknell pitch over the right-center wall to tie up the game at two all. With two outs and runners on second and third in the eighth, Chiou knocked in the game-winner with his two-run single off Agan reliever Hsu Wen-hsiung (
The two teams split games two and three on Saturday and Sunday to give the Gida the edge for the three-game series.
The 5-4 win by the Agan on Saturday ended their longest non-winning streak of the season at 10 and gave manager Hsu Sheng-ming (
"It's simple, someone has to take responsibility for our poor record, and that person should be the manager." Hsu commented on his team's 7-1-24 mark.
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