Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen pitched five innings of no-hit ball and Kao Guo-ching drove in a pair of runs with a bases-clearing double to lead the President Lions past the La New Bears in a 3-0 shutout at Pingdong on Friday evening.
The staff ace for the Lions has won six straight after starting off the season with a 0-2 mark to lead the league in total victories. If it had not been for the stiffness in his right shoulder that forced Pan out of the game after the fifth in a no-hit bid, he probably could have gone the distance for the Lions.
That would not matter much for Lions manager Luo Guo-chang because Rob Cordemans was equally effective in a rare relief appearance by holding a potent Bears lineup to two scattered singles over four brilliant innings to keep the shutout intact.
The classic pitchers' duel saw the Lions draw first blood in the top of the second on Lui Fu-hao's RBI groundout off Bears starter Luis Martinez.
That was all the runs that either team would score until Kao's clutch double in the sixth with men on first and second that made it 3-0 in favor of the Lions before they held on for the eventual win.
Cobras 9, Whales 8
Deng Shih-yang's timely three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth rallied the Macoto Cobras from a three-run deficit before Chiou Chang-rong's two-out double scored the winning run in the tenth in a 9-8 win over the Chinatrust Whales at Sinjhuang on Friday night.
Five first-inning runs by the Cobras offense roughed up the Whales in what appeared to be an all-Macoto contest. But that was not the case as the Whales chipped away at the deficit by scoring a run in the third and the fourth before actually claiming a 7-5 lead with four runs in the fifth, highlighted by Kuo Dai-yong's two-run single off Cobras reliever Lee Ming-jin.
They scored one more run in the sixth to lead the Cobras 8-5, setting the stage for Deng's late-game heroics.
Travis Minix was credited with his third win of the season with three innings of one-hit relief to beat his counterpart Du Chang-wei, who served up Chiou's game-winner in the tenth.
The Whales actually outhit the Cobras 12-to-10 in the game, but suffered after another late-innings collapse by the struggling Whales bullpen which had blown four saves in its last six chances.
The win for the Cobras upped their lead over the second-placed Bears to two and a half games in the latest standings while the loss by the Whales set them four games behind the Cobras in fourth place.
As for the Dinos, point guard Chen Chih-chung's team-high 15 points was the lone bright spot on a night when not much went right for them.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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