Second-half action began in the Chinese Professional Baseball League on Friday with the La New Bears scoring a narrow 4-3 win over the Sinon Bulls in Douliou to end a three-game losing skid.
Gary Rath pitched seven solid innings of three-run ball and Huang Hsiao-wei knocked in the game-winning hit in the top of the eighth to break a 3-3 deadlock to deliver the thrilling win.
The contest began with the Bulls drawing first blood in the bottom of the second with Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan's solo home run off Rath for his ninth blast of the season.
The 1-0 Sinon lead would last until the top of the fifth when the Bears connected for three runs on two singles, a double and three walks.
The Bears' offensive outburst was highlighted by Tsai Jien-wei's clutch two-run double with two outs, to claim a 3-1 advantage.
Chang's second hit of the game on a 3-for-3 night with a runner in scoring position quickly cut the Bears' lead to 3-2.
The Bulls then managed to even things up with Chen Chih-wei's RBI groundout in the bottom of the sixth, a hit that set the stage for Huang's heroics in the eighth inning.
Improving to 9-4 for the year with his ninth victory was Rath, who dodged a bullet by pitching out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth with an inning-ending double play, to tie Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen of the President Lions for most wins this season.
Picking up the loss was Bulls reliever Yang Jien-fu, who survived a dreadful seventh by getting the Bears to ground into an inning-ending double play in relief of starter Iba Tomokazu, before giving up two hits and a walk in the eighth to load up the bags for Huang's game-deciding RBI groundout.
The Bulls actually outhit the victorious Bears by a 9-6 margin, but stranded 10 runners by batting a miserable 1-for-10 with men in scoring position to lose the game.
Lions 9, Elephants 2
Racking up 16 hits against four Brother Elephants hurlers, the President Lions celebrated manager Lu Wen-sheng's managerial debut with a 9-2 rout in Tainan on Friday evening to begin the second half with a big bang.
Back-to-back run-scoring doubles by Pan Wu-hsiung and Tilson Brito -- the former driving in three runs and the latter one in what turned out to be a five-run second inning -- put the home cats ahead 5-1 after two innings of play and they never looked back again en route to the lopsided Elephants win.
All nine of the Lions' starters had at least one hit in the game with five scoring multi-hit outings to back up starter Pete Munro's four-hit gem in seven magnificent innings for his sixth win of the year.
The victory was the Lions' sixth straight, as they took to the new direction of skipper Lu with a huge win in front of a supportive home crowd.
Down 5-1, the Elephants mustered their second run of the game in the fourth on Chen Guan-ren's sacrifice fly off Munro to make the score 5-2.
But that as close as they would get with the Lions piling on four unanswered runs over the next three innings, capped by Yang Seng's eighth-inning double that scored a runner all the way from first to put the game away long before the final out in the ninth.
Three untimely errors by the Elephants defense dug an early five-run hole for the men in the golden uniforms.
They never recovered as Munro allowed two runs -- only one earned -- on four hits while fanning four and walking none to make it virtually impossible to play catch-up for the Elephants.
Elephants starter Nick Bierbrodt was tagged with the loss by serving up all five of the Lions' early runs on six hits in just two innings of work, even though none of the runs was earned.
Bierbrodt is now 2-3 for the year.
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