Elephants get form back on track after Olympics

Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-ming (彭政閔) picked up where he left off before leaving for the Athens Olympics by crushing the first pitch he saw from Tsai Shih-ching (蔡士勤) for a two-run, opposite-field blast in Tuesday's contest against the Macoto Cobras.

The Brother Elephants' cleanup man went 1-for-3 with two RBIs in his first game back in the Chinese Professional Baseball League after the month-long break to help the Elephants beat the Cobras 3-1.

Elephants starter Yokota Hisanori allowed only one run on three hits while fanning eight in seven innings to record his seventh victory of the season. Although Yokota did not have the pinpoint control that hitters around the league have become accustomed to (issuing a career-high five walks), the 37-year-old Japanese veteran managed to get the crucial outs necessary to hold the serpents scoreless over the first six frames.

As for the Cobras, stranding four runners in scoring position over the first six innings did not exactly please manager Kuo Tai-yuan (郭泰源), who had high hopes of finishing off the season strong.

Wednesday's 2-1 final in favor of the Elephants was another low-scoring affair where the Elephants came from behind to tie the game at 1-1 on shortstop Chen Rei-cheng's (陳瑞振) sharp liner that ricochet off reliever Lee Ming-jing's (李明進) leg for a run-scoring infield single in the seventh inning and won it on designated hitter Lee Chih-jeh's (李志傑) solo shot off Cobras reliever Bienvenido Rivera in the top of the eighth.

Lee's late-game heroics not only saves the day for the Elephants, which committed three errors, not to mention being out-hit the Cobras by a 6-to-4 margin, it helped make a 14-game winner out of starter Jonathan Hurst.

The former Major Leaguer from South Carolina surrendered just one run on four hits in eight solid innings.

Other than allowing a two-out RBI single in the bottom of the third, Hurst was nearly flawless in his first start since late July.

Cobras lefty ace Lin Ying-jeh (林英傑) had a no-hitter going through the first five innings, but was pulled from the game with an unspecified injury. The five shutout innings extended Lin's current scoreless streak to 24 innings and counting.

Team Captain Huang "Big Brother Tung" Chung-yi's (黃忠義) grand slam capped off an offensive explosion for the Sinon Bulls in their 14-6 slaughter of the La New Bears in Taichung on Wednesday. The Bulls trailed the Bears 1-0 after the first inning before piling on a dozen runs in the next three innings to go up 12-1 after four frames.

Sinon slugger Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan (張泰山) tied Peng Cheng-ming's league-leading number of homers with his 14th long ball of the year when he deposited an offering from Bears reliever Hsu Yu-wei (徐余偉) deep into the left-center bleachers to lead off the bottom of the sixth.

Starter Osvaldo Martinez racked up his sixth win of the year, despite a sub-par effort in allowing six runs on nine hits, while his American counterpart Chris Wright dropped to 1-3 for the year with the ugly loss.

The Bears did not fare any better against the Chinatrust Whales in Game 1 of their three-game series on Thursday either, as they suffered another blowout by a final of 11-3.

Unlike their previous loss, the Bears actually hung close -- trailing the Whales 4-3 in the fifth inning until the marine attack overwhelmed them in the bottom half of the inning with seven straight runs.