Late-inning relief pitching continued to be a problem for the Sinon Bulls last weekend after they surrendered seventh and eighth-inning leads on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, to gift wrap the games for the Brother Elephants with finals of 10-6 and 8-3.
The Bulls began both contests with a bang by scoring first-inning runs. The jumped to a 3-0 lead in the third inning in Game 1 and a 2-0 lead in the fifth in Game 2.
In the top of the seventh during the first game the Elephants lineup erupted for five unanswered runs against Bulls relievers Tsai Chung-nan (蔡仲南) and Gustavo Lopez, turning a 6-3 deficit into an 8-6 lead.
After yielding back-to-back singles to the Elephants, Tsai would walk the third and final batter he faced to load up the bags before Lopez came into the game.
Elephants slugger Chen "The Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan (陳致遠) got all of the second pitch from Lopez, for a grand slam, giving his team the lead for good.
American starter Jeff Andra took a 3-1 lead into the eighth on Sunday before being relieved by set-up man Yu Wen-bin (
Two batters and an Elephants run later, cleanup man Peng Cheng-ming (彭政閔) belted a league-leading sixth homer for the season, this one also a grand slam, doubling their lead over the Bulls at 6-3.
Foreign starters Nakagomi Sin, Jonathan Hurst, and Yokota Hisanori all earned a win in the Elephants' three-game sweep of the Bulls, although they were not as sharp as they had been in the previous week.
Lions versus Bears
President Lions fans also enjoyed a sweep as their team took four straight from the La New Bears last week.
First baseman Tseng Yang-chih's (
Saturday's series finale between the two clubs was one for the record books as Lions veteran Chen Cheng-hsien (
The two blasts marked Chen's 99th and 100th home runs in an illustrious career that began 15 seasons ago.
Chen became only the fifth player in league history to break the 100-homer plateau.
Whales versus Cobras
The Chinatrust Whales avoided being swept by the league-leading Macoto Cobras in their three-game series by taking Game 3 in Taichung on Sunday afternoon in a 4-3 thriller, after Friday night's 12-3 laugher as the Whales ended up beached.
Leftfielder Kuo Dai-yung's (
Whales closer Dario Veras got the rare win for the Whales while his counterpart Huang blew his first save of the season.
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