"When you're hot, the baseball looks as big as a basketball," Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan
The league's newly crowned career home run leader was 3-for-3 with a solo homer that surpassed the previous mark set by former Mercury Tigers great Luis Iglesias of Panama.
Along with the homer, Chang's 11th of the year and 165th in an illustrious career, the outstanding slugger from Taitung also collected his 700th RBI to celebrate the win on a milestone night.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CPBL
Cheng Chang-ming's double and Chen Jien-wei's single in the top of the first and fourth respectively spotted Whales starter Chu Wei-ming an early 2-0 lead that was cut in half by the Prince in the bottom of the fourth with one monstrous swing.
The Bulls would knot things up at 2-2 in the sixth when first baseman Hsu Guo-long drew a bases-loaded walk off Chu after two outs that chased the Whales starter.
The score remained 2-all until the bottom of the eighth when the victorious Bulls skidded ahead for good after second baseman Huang Chung-yi slapped a two-out single off Whales reliever Shen Yu-jeh and scored on Hsu's line-drive single up the middle for what turned out to be the game-winning hit.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CPBL
Set-up man Kuo Yong-chih picked up his second win in as many days for pitching a scoreless eighth before Panamanian right-hander Jorge Cortez got the final two outs in the ninth for his first save of the year.
As for the hapless Whales who lost their third one-run game of the week over a series sweep by the Bulls, the term "bad luck" could not even begin to describe the kind of season they are having as they sink to the bottom of the Chinese Professional Baseball League standings in the mist of a four-game losing streak.
Bears 6, Cobras 3
Bears 3, Cobras 1
Behind solid efforts by their top two pitchers, the La New Bears earned a double-header sweep against the Macoto Cobras in Sinjuang Saturday to become the CPBL's first 20-win club, beating the Cobras 6-3 in the afternoon and then 3-1 in the evening.
American righty Kenny Rayborn pocketed his league-leading sixth victory of the season with seven innings of three-run ball (all unearned), allowing six hits while fanning five and walking five.
After a shaky three-run first that included a key error by the Bears defense and a wild pitch that scored a run, Rayborn quickly regained his usual presence on the mound to keep the scoring gate shut over the next six innings. The Bears bullpen also did its part with reliever Lee Fong-hua retiring six Cobras straight over two perfect innings to secure the win.
Offensively for the Bears, outfielder Tsai Jien-wei's 3-for-5 hitting with three RBIs led an attack that rang up 14 hits off a depleted Cobras staff that was missing two of its top four pitchers because of injuries.
The night game between the two squads had the serpents jumping to a 1-0 lead in the fourth on a solo shot by Dominican slugger Rudy Pemberton off Bears lefty ace Wu Si-yo.
The Cobras lead lasted less than an inning as the Bears roared back to answer with a two-run fifth on a rare triple by third baseman Shih Chih-wei off game loser Lee Ming-jin, that scored both runs in the inning. Lee got the unexpected call to the mound one batter into the fifth when starter Hsu Chu-jien had to leave the game with some soreness to his throwing arm after what had been four magnificent innings by Hsu in a one-hit outing.
Lin Chih-sheng's solo shot to deep center off Cobras reliever Felix Villegas in the ninth was icing on the cake, as the Bears completed the double-header sweep of the serpents in a convincing manner.
Wu remained undefeated for the year with the win as he improved to a 5-0 record with another solid start, allowing the lone Cobras run on six hits and five strikeouts.
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