Chen Rei-chang's walk-off double with the go-ahead run on first clinched the game for the Brother Elephants as they overcame a one-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth to top the Chinatrust Whales 4-3 in Sinjhuang on Tuesday evening for their fourth-straight win.
It would have been a tremendous letdown for the Elephants if they had not won the game since the bullpen blew a late-game lead by allowing the Whales to score two runs in the top of the ninth -- turning a one-run lead into a one-run deficit heading into the bottom of the ninth.
Tuesday's contest began with the Elephants striking first in the bottom of the first against Whales starter Lorenzo Barcelo on Chen "The Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan's RBI single.
That would be the only run that either team could score through the sixth, with Barcelo keeping the Elephants hitters at bay for the most part and his counterpart Nicholas Ungs pitching six innings of shutout ball in a two-hit gem. The Whales finally mustered the equalizer in the seventh, with Kuo Dai-yong's run-scoring, two-out single off the American right-hander.
With the score locked at 1-1, the Elephants thought they had the game won in the bottom of the eighth when Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min came through with an RBI double that scored the run all the way from first to make it 2-1 in favor of the Elephants.
But the Whales were not ready to call it quits and countered with a pair of runs off Elephants closer Todd Moser in the top of the ninth on two singles and two walks to set the table for Chen Rei-chang's game-winning hit.
Bears 15, Lions 4
Erupting for 15 runs on 17 hits in a game they could not afford to lose, the La New Bears overpowered the President Lions by a 15-4 margin in Kaohsiung on Tuesday night. They now trail the Lions by half a game in the race for the second-half season title.
With the top-ranked Lions leading the second-place Bears by one-and-a-half games in the standings heading into the match, a win by the visitors would have clinched the second-half title regardless of the outcome of their season finale yesterday.
Instead, the Bears made sure the race for the title would go down to the wire as they humbled their archrivals from Tainan with an all-out offensive that proved too much even for the Lions' Pete Munro, the league's ERA leader this year with a stingy 1.64 mark prior to the game.
Chen Fong-min's three-run blast off Munro capped a six-run third for the home Bears as they broke a scoreless tie before tacking on five more over the next two innings to make it 11-1.
Even though the Lions picked up three straight runs during the sixth and seventh to cut the Bears' lead to seven, it was too little too late as the Bears finished off the night by scoring the game's final four runs.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
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Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
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