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Team Taiwan tame La New Bears to earn another victory

Chiang Jien-ming of Team Taiwan pitches the ball during a warm-up game against the La New Bears in Douliou yesterday. Taiwan beat the Bears 2-1. PHOTO: LIN SAN-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES

Team Taiwan continued their winning ways in the exhibition round for the 2008 IBAF Final Olympic Qualification Tournament at Douliou yesterday afternoon by topping the La New Bears in a 2-1 decision to remain unbeaten in five games.

Despite allowing an early run to the Bears in the top of the first on a wild pitch by starter Jiang Jien-ming following a leadoff double by Tsai Jien-wei, Team Taiwan kept its composure the rest of the way, as it blanked the Bears over the next eight innings to give the offense a chance to win it.

Trailing 0-1 in the bottom of the fourth, Lin Yi-chuan and Lin Chih-sheng opened the inning with consecutive base hits off Bears starter Mike Johnson of Canada to put runners on second and third with no outs to set up back-to-back sacrifice-flies by Kuo Yen-wen and Yeh Jung-chang to lead 2-1.

Team Taiwan relievers Lin Keh-chien, Lee Chui-guan, and Huang Jung-chung then combined for four shutout innings of relief to preserve the win.

Also earning worthy praise from Team Taiwan and the fans on hand was the La New bullpen consisting of veteran righties Lee Fong-hua and Liang Rue-hao and ace closer Macoto Suzuki of Japan, which surrendered only one hit over four innings of play to further expose Team Taiwan's trouble at the plate.

Picking up the narrow win for Taiwan was Jiang who allowed at least one hit in four of the five innings he pitched, but managed to work out of a couple of jams to make it a one-run game.

Suffering the loss for the Bears was Johnson, whose unofficial Taiwan debut was acceptable for the time being, with two runs and five hits allowed over four innings of work.

Offensively for Team Taiwan, Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan and Lin Chih-sheng bagged multi-hit games with a pair of hits apiece to account for four of the six hits on the day.

T-Rex 1, South Korea 3

The dmedia T-Rex fell lost to the South Korean national team in Taichung yesterday afternoon to give the visitors their second victory in as many games against clubs from the Chinese Professional Baseball League.

Playing in their second game of a three-game set against the local pro teams, the South Korean made the most of the four hits they had by scoring three runs over the first three innings for a 3-0 lead.

A lack of timely hitting was the culprit in the T-Rex loss as they batted a lousy 1-for-9 with runners in scoring positions.

Dmedia finally got on the board for their lone run of the game in the eighth with Hsieh "the Ugly" Jia-shien doubling in the runner from first to avoid what would have been an embarrassing shutout.
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