Scoring early and often, the President Lions trounced the Brother Elephants in a 12-4 final at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tainan on Friday night to win their third straight game of the week.
Chang Chih-chiang pitched seven quality innings of two-run ball and Kao Guo-ching went a perfect 5-for-5 with four RBIs to lead the home cats in an impressive victory that also featured the Lions’ 1000th home run, a solo shot to left by Dominican slugger Tilson Brito in the bottom of the third.
The contest began with the Lions wasting little time getting to Elephants starter Keith Ramsey with an RBI-single and a two-run double by Kao and Chen Lien-hong respectively to open a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first.
The Elephants would two of the runs back in the top of the third when Chu Hong-yi tripled to knock in the runner from second and scored himself on a wild pitch by Chang to make it 3-2 only to see the Lions tacked on nine unanswered runs over the next four innings, highlighted by back-to-back homers by Kao and Brito in the third and Wang Tzu-song’s two-run triple in the fifth to blow the game wide open with a 12-2 cushion.
Brother managed to plate their third and fourth run of the game in the top of the ninth with help from the Lions defense on a two-run error and that was as close as the Elephants would get with the Lions reliever Yen Chuen-hao getting the last three outs in the game to end the lopsided win for the Lions.
Picking up his second win of the year to even his record at 2-2 was Chang who allowed two runs on three hits over seven innings of work with some nifty defensive plays by his defense that robbed the Elephants for at least a pair of base hits.
Suffering the loss for the Elephants was Ramsey whose Taiwan debut was far from spectacular as the American right-hander served up six runs on seven hits, including two homers, over three innings.
T-Rex 5, Bears 3
Cheng Chin-fong became the fastest man to reach the 50-homer plateau on Friday night by going deep twice against the dmedia T-Rex pitching.
But that still was not good enough to help the La New Bears get back on the wining track as they dropped 3-5 decision to the T-Rex at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium for their third straight loss of the week.
It was the former Major Leaguer’s fifth career multi-homer game with the first coming off dmedia starter Yen Chih-chung in the bottom of the first and the second at the expense of reliever Pan Chung-hsiao in the bottom of the sixth.
After Chen’s two-run shot in the bottom of the first gave the Bears a quick 2-0 lead, the T-Rex would score three of their own in the third on RBI-singles by Wu Jia-hui and Deng Shih-yang and a run-scoring groundout by Wang Chuan-jia.
The T-Rex would up their lead by one in the top of the sixth in a 4-2 game before Chen’s second blast of the game, a solo shot to deep-left that brought the Bears to within a run of their former TML (Taiwan Major League) brethrens.
That was as close as they got as the T-Rex tacked on an insurance run in the eighth to concluding all the scoring to pick up the win that ended their recent non-winning skid at four.
Pan was credited with his first career win for his 3-2/3 innings of one-run relief to beat La New starter Huang Jung-chung who lasted only two-plus innings in his shortest start of the year.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
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Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa yesterday set a women’s only world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds as she won the London Marathon, while Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe put a star-studded men’s field to the sword. For 28-year-old Assefa it was ample compensation for finishing runner-up in London and the Paris Olympics last year — especially as bitter Dutch rival, the Ethiopia-born Sifan Hassan, finished third. Assefa dropped Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei as the race, played out in blazing sunshine and with thousands lining the route, entered its business end. She came home almost three minutes clear of the Kenyan. Hassan, who beat her in
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