Lin Chih-sheng's RBI-single to left capped a two-run eighth that broke a 5-5 tie for the La New Bears as they held on to beat the dmedia T-Rex 7-6 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday to kick off the weekend series in high fashion.
With the score deadlocked at 5-all after a five-run sixth by the T-Rex that erased an early 5-0 lead for the Bears, the momentum was definitely swinging dmedia's way by in a brand new ball game.
But after a scoreless seventh, the Bears would string together one more offensive with Huang "Easy" Long-yi knocking in a tie-breaking run with a chopping single to left before Lin came through with a two-out single that made it 7-5 in favor of the Bears.
And fortunately for La New the lead was by two because the T-Rex would ended up scoring once more in the bottom of the ninth to make it 7-6 and actually had runners at the corners with two outs before Hsieh "the Ugly" Jia-shien grounded into second for the game-ending out.
The showdown between the two former Taiwan Major League (TML) clubs was all-Bears from the get go as they struck for three runs in the top of the second on Pan Chung-wei's three-run homer to left off Cobras starter Lin Jing-ming before tacking on a run each in the third and fifth on a run-scoring single by Pan and a solo blast by US slugger Gary Burnham to lead it 5-0.
A five-run sixth that featured six singles and saw the T-Rex sent ten men to the plate against two different Bears hurlers quickly erased a once-comfortable Bears lead and made things interesting again, before the game-deciding eighth.
Picking up a well-deserved win for the Bears to even his record at 2-2 was right-hander Lee Fong-hua who threw 2/1/3 innings of one-run relief on a pair of singles before being pulled in the ninth.
As for the T-Rex, a valiant comeback that showed they could play with any team in the league fell short by a run in the end as they failed to knock in the runners in the bottom of the ninth to force the game into extra-innings.
Elephants 13, Lions 3
Overcoming an early deficit with a dozen unanswered runs, the Brother Elephants stampeded over the President Lions in a 13-3 final in Tainan for their third win of the season Friday evening.
Chen "Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan and Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min regained their old form as the league's premier hitters by going a combined 5-for-9 with six RBIs to account for the bulk of the Elephants offense.
Chen Rei-chang and Huang Sheng-wei also connected for three hits apiece off a struggling Lions staff that gave up 17 total hits in a game that the Lions actually led 2-1 after three innings of play.
President starter Lin Cheng-fong cruised through the first four innings with minimal resistance before running into a world of trouble in the fifth while fellow bullpen mates Kao Jien-san and Kao Long-wei added fuel to fire by surrendering six more runs in the sixth, highlighted by Chen Chih-yuan's towering three-run shot to left, to blow the game wide open at that point.
Rookie starter Mai Jia-rei was credited with his first career victory for the Elephants with six solid inning of work. He allowed two runs on four hits to beat his counterpart Lin who realized success early, but simply could not sustain the level of play over the course of the game.
RSS