With the All-Star game scheduled for Saturday in Taichung, this week's team matchups in the CPBL are slightly different from the norm.
Instead of the 10 games that are usually played each week, two games have been scheduled from Tuesday through Thursday for a total of six contests this week.
This year's mid-summer classic will be the first of its kind since the two leagues merged at the beginning of the season. Fan support for this year's game was overwhelming as the total number of votes received by league officials broke the 660,000 mark -- the highest ever in Taiwan pro baseball history.
Experts attribute the positive results to the initiation of casting fan ballots via mobile phones. Almost 133,500 votes were received from cellphones.
Stars from the six ball clubs are split into two teams this year: Team Red, headed by Elephants manager Lin Yi-tseng (
Leading all players in total votes was Elephants star center fielder Chen Chih-yuan (
Lions speedster Huang Kang-ling (
Starting off on the mound for Team Red will be Bulls second-year pitcher Tsai Chung-nan (
Batting coach Wang Kuang-hui (
Rounding out the starting lineup for Team Red are Elephants' Chen Rei-chang (
Representing the Gida on Team Red are first baseman Hsieh Jia-shien (
Catching for Team White is Tseng Chih-cheng (
The rest of the starting lineup for Team White are Lions' designated hitter Luo Ming-ching (
This year's pre-game festivities include "Fanfest," which begins at 10am, a beer-drinking contest at 1:30pm, an anti-SARS charity auction at 2pm, autograph sessions from 2:30pm to 2:45pm, and the Homerun Derby at 4:25pm.
Taichung City Mayor Hu Chih-chiang (
Round Up
The Elephants easily handled the Gida on Tuesday in Hsinchu with a 9-1 win. Elephants starter Gomez Martinez of Panama was brilliant in his debut as he held the Gida hitters to no runs on four hits over eight innings of play. Martinez also fanned seven en route to his first victory of the season.
On Wednesday, the Lions defeated the Whales in Chiayi by a score of 5-2 to extend the Whales' non-winning stream to four games. Lions starter Pan Wei-luen got his first win in nearly a month. Pan fell to 1-5.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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