Contributing Reporter
Rallying for four unanswered runs over the final three innings, the La New Bears overcame deficits as large as four runs to top the Sinon Bulls by an 8-5 final score in Tianmu on Saturday.
The win not only was the Bears' fourth in five games, but also pulled them to within a half-game of the top-ranked President Lions, who lost to the Macoto Cobras by a 1-run margin in Tainan in another of Saturday's games.
Chen Chih-wei's two-run triple off Bears starter Andrew Lorraine broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fourth before Yeh Jung-chang followed with an RBI single to cap off the three-run inning.
After Hsu Guo-long's sacrifice fly to center in the fifth that plated the fourth run of the game for the Bulls to make it 4-0, the Bears suddenly awoke with a four-run sixth, highlighted by Jiang Chih-tsong's three-run homer off Sinon starter Alfredo Gonzalez to tie the game up at four-all.
The Bulls would regain a brief 5-4 lead on a throwing error by the Bears' Jiang in the bottom of sixth, only to see the defending champs counter with four unanswered runs over the final three frames en route to an 8-5 victory.
Lin Chih-sheng took a pitch on the back for his team with the bases loaded to squeeze home the tying run in the seventh before Chen Fong-min drove in the go-ahead run with a solo blast in what turned out to be a two-run eighth that made it 7-5.
Chen Chin-fong's 22nd long ball of the year, a solo shot over the leftfield wall, added an insurance run for the Bears and that was how this one ended.
Cobras 6, Lions 1
Chang Hsien-chih tossed six brilliant innings of one-run ball and Lin "Wild Hog" Hong-yuan drove in three runs on a three-for-five night to guide the Cobras past the league-leading Lions in a 6-1 road win in Tainan on Saturday night.
The Cobras right-hander, who came in second behind the Elephants' Chen Guan-ren in last year's Rookie of the Year voting with a 12-10 record, won his 10th game of the year on the night for consecutive seasons with double-digit wins.
Other than a solo homer that he gave up to the Lions' Kao Chih-kang in the bottom of the third, Chang was in total control of a Lions lineup that had averaged more than eight runs per game in their six previous contests.
Doing the damage at the plate was the "Wild Hog," who greeted his former club by collecting three runs on as many hits to account for half of his team's total runs.
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