Chen Rei-chang's walk-off solo home run off Kuo Yong-chih in the bottom of the 12th lifted the Brother Elephants past the Sinon Bulls in a 9-8 marathon in Sinjhuang on Thursday evening for their seventh win in nine chances.
Having been eliminated from the postseason with a poor start in the second half, the surging Elephants had nothing but their pride to play for against their archrivals from Taichung.
And the hitters responded to that mission as they rolled off five straight runs against the Bulls over the first four innings, capped by Huang Cheng-wei's sacrifice fly off Sinon starter Yang Jien-fu in the bottom of the fourth for a sizable 5-0 advantage.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Trailing by five against a one-hit effort by Brother starter Liu Jung-nan through the sixth, the Bulls bats finally awoke in the seventh with three consecutive hits off Liu to score two runs that chased the Elephants hurler before tacking on two more off reliever Wang Jing-li to make it 5-4.
Lin Tsung-nan led off the inning with a solo shot to left, followed by Chang Jien-ming's rare triple that had the Elephants bullpen warming up in a hurry. Then came an RBI single by Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan that knocked in the Bulls' second run of the contest, cutting Liu's night short.
After Wang retired the first two batters he faced with back-to-back strikeouts that seemed to have gotten the Elephants out of the inning without further damage, the Bulls' Su Jien-rong made sure his team would not go away easily by drilling an offering from Wang over the leftfield wall for a two-run blast that cut the Elephants lead to one run.
The Bulls actually led it by one in the eighth by connecting for two runs against Elephants closer Todd Moser on a pinch-hit RBI single by Lin Hsun-wei and a wild pitch by Moser that scored the go-ahead run at that point.
But the lead would last less than an inning as the Bulls returned the favor in the bottom of the eighth by surrendering a two-run single to the Elephants' Chen "the Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan with the bases load to reclaim a 7-6 lead.
Down by a run, Sinon forced in the tying run off Nicholas Ungs on three straight base hits off the US righty to send the game into extra innings before each team scored another run in the 10th to set the stage for Chen Rei-chang's 12th-inning clincher.
Wu Jung-yi ended up with his fourth win of the year for pitching two hitless innings of shutout ball to beat the Bulls' Kuo, who blew a chance to win it in the 10th by allowing an unearned run before serving up Chen's homer to lose the game in dramatic fashion.
Bears 4, Cobras 3
Shih Chih-wei's timely single with a runner on second scored the game-winner for the La New Bears in the bottom of the ninth as they edged past the Macoto Cobras by a 4-3 margin in Kaohsiung to fall within a half-game of the league-leading President Lions.
With the second-half title on the line in the final week of regular season play, a loss by the Bears would have set them 1.5 games back against the Lions. Instead, they rose to the occasion by unlocking a 3-3 tie in the final inning of the play to take the final game of the season from their former TML brethren.
Liu Jia-hao's lining single to left scored Jiang Chih-tsong, who preceded Liu with a triple off Cobras starter Travis Minix in the bottom of the second to give the home Bears an early 1-0 lead, only to see the Cobras counter with a run of their own in the top of the third on Yang Rei-chih's two-out single that scored the equalizer before skidding ahead 2-1 in the top of the fourth on an RBI single by Kao Wei.
The Bears regained the momentum and the lead in the seesaw battle with a pair of runs in the fifth, courtesy of Raul Gonzalez's two-run shot off Minix before the Cobras tied it up for the third time in the game in the sixth to set the table for Shih's game-winner.
Huang Jung-chung improved to 8-5 for the year with the win for pitching the Bears out of a one-out jam with men on second and third in the top of the ninth, while Chen Jia-hong was hit with his first loss of the year after going 4-0 for the Cobras in 27 game appearances, mostly from a setup man's role.
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