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.
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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
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