The much anticipated three-game series between the league-leading Brother Elephants and the second-place Sinon Bulls in Taichung did not live up to its billing as all three games were decided by at least four runs.
Down by 1-1/2 games prior to the start of the series, the Bulls opened the homestand on Thursday night with a three-game sweep in mind, only to see it smothered by starting pitcher Yokota Hisanori in a 9-2 Elephants win.
Hisanori greeted the Bulls batters with all his pitches working to perfection through seven strong innings of play.
Other than yielding a solo blast to Cheng Chao-han (
Bulls right-hander Tsai Chung-nan (
Offensively for the Elephants, the "Chen Huai-shan (
Chen is 9-for-14 with nine RBIs in the past four contests.
Game 2 of the series on Friday night proved the Elephants mortal as the Bulls hitters, led by all-star third baseman Chang Tai-shan's (
Bulls ace starter Jeff Andra extended his winning streak to 12 games as he remained perfect for the year. The southpaw from Kansas allowed just two runs on nine hits over eight innings.
The series finale took place on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in front of a crowd of over 10,000 as the Elephants sent veteran Jonathan Hurst in a matchup against Bulls' strikeout artist Osvaldo Martinez.
The Bulls quickly took a one-run lead after Chang Tai-shan's single up the middle in the bottom of the first drove in a run. The Elephants finally fought back with four runs of their own in the top of the sixth. Second baseman Huang Chung-yi (
The Bulls would score one more run in the bottom of the seventh to make it 4-2. The Elephants knocked in two more runs in the ninth to win it 6-2.
Reliever Wu Jun-yi (
Elsewhere in the league, the red-hot Chinatrust Whales extended their winning streak to four games as they swept the struggling First Securities Agan 4-0 during their visit to Pingtung and Kaohsiung.
After winning the first two games earlier last week, the Whales beat the Agan in game 3 of the series by a score of 4-2.
Behind second baseman Lin Yueh-liang's (
Agan second baseman Chou Seng-yi (
The right-hander from the Dominican Republic would force home a run on a hit batsman and get Chen Kai-fa (
In a closely fought battle on Sunday afternoon in Kaohsiung, the Whales escaped with a 3-2 win to sweep the Agan.
Whales starter Kao Chien-san (
The bullpen for the Whales gave up only one unearned runs in the last three frames.
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