Team Cuba is in town to defend its title at the 2006 XVI Intercontinental Cup Baseball Championship, which opens in Taichung today.
Eight squads from around the world are competing in the 10-day competition, with the winners to rule the amateur baseball world for the next four years.
The championship is the first international baseball tournament to be hosted by Taichung, where a brand new baseball stadium named after the competition has been built to seat more than 20,000 spectators per game over the next 10 days of play.
The eight teams -- Australia, Cuba, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, will play a seven-game, round-robin preliminary round before they play through a double-elimination to determine the final winners in the medal round next weekend.
In preparation for the tournament, which was first held in 1973 in Rome, Italy, and where Team Japan claimed the first title, several of this year's teams have arrived in town early to play exhibition rounds against each other.
Team Taiwan managed to take two of the three games it played in the exhibition round, with a 4-2 win over Italy and a close 2-1 victory over Cuba. Taiwan suffered a 6-4 loss to a tough Australian squad.
While solid outings by the pitching staff put a faint smile on skipper Yeh Chih-shien's face over the three-game exhibition round, his hitters' inability to produce runs against probably the second-line pitchers of the opposing teams sparked some serious concern.
"We will definitely need to get our bats warmed up in a hurry if we want to stay competitive," Yeh said after the narrow win over the Cubans on Tuesday.
"That [extra batting practice] will be our focus for the next couple of days," Yeh added.
Standing in the way of Yeh's quest to win in front of the home crowd are South Korea, Japan, Cuba and Australia, four countries with rich baseball traditions and frequent top finishers in international competitions.
Making the job to win at home even tougher is the fact that the top players from the La New Bears, Chen Chin-fong, Lin Chih-sheng and lefty ace Wu Si-yo, will not be taking part in this year's tournament, as the Bears will represent Taiwan in this year's Asian Series in Tokyo, Japan. At the series, which opens this weekend, the top teams from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China will compete for the bragging right of being crowned Asia's best.
SSC Napoli’s Italian Serie A title hopes suffered a late setback on Sunday when they were held to a 2-2 draw at home against Genoa, setting up a thrilling season finale with closest rivals Inter just one point behind. The hosts remain top with 78 points, holding a slim lead over Inter, who won 2-0 at Torino earlier on Sunday, with two rounds remaining. To make matters worse for Napoli, midfielder Stanislav Lobotka, struggling with an ankle injury, was forced off just minutes after the match began. Scott McTominay delivered a perfect pass into the box where Romelu Lukaku got
Harry Kane opened the scoring ahead of lifting his first career silverware as Bayern Munich beat Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-0, with veteran Thomas Mueller playing his last home game for the club. Bayern officially won the title on May 4 when defending champions Bayer Leverkusen were held to a 2-2 draw at Freiburg, but were presented with the Bundesliga shield in front of their home fans at full-time. Dripping wet after being showered with beer by teammates, Kane said the title win was “an incredible feeling,” and hoped it would be “the first of many.” “It’s been lot of hard work, a lot of
Taiwanese e-sports veteran Lin “ET” Chia-hung yesterday successfully defended his King of Fighters XV title at this year’s Evolution Championship Series: Japan (EVO Japan), securing his second consecutive championship. Lin claimed victory with a 3-1 win over Japanese pro gamer “mok” in the grand final, repeating his earlier 3-1 win against the same opponent in the winners’ final. The 40-year-old earned a ￥1 million (US$6,897) cash prize at the two-day tournament, which drew 294 competitors. Mok, Lin’s toughest rival in the bracket, took home ￥400,000 as runner-up. Lin remains undefeated in match sets against mok in King of Fighters XV, holding a 10-0 record,
Batting great Virat Kohli yesterday announced his immediate retirement from Test cricket, just days before India name their squad for a tour to England. Kohli, who scored 9,230 runs in 123 matches at an average of 46.85, posted his decision on Instagram five days after India captain Rohit Sharma called time on his own Test career. Since making his debut in 2011, Kohli struck 30 hundreds and 31 fifties with a highest score of 254 not out, mainly batting at number four in the order. “It’s been 14 years since I first wore the baggy blue in Test cricket,” the
RSS