The favorites had little trouble bagging up wins around the league on Friday, with the President Lions topping the dmedia T-Rex 13-3 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang and the Brother Elephants humbling the Sinon Bulls 8-2 at the Hsinchu Municipal Baseball Stadium.
Louis Pote continued his dominance over the opposing hitters by winning his seventh in a row to remain unbeaten at 7-0 this year. The American right-hander, who joined the Cats at the start of this season, went eight strong innings with three allowed runs on eight hits while fanning seven and walking one.
Offensively for the Lions, seven different hitters had multi-hit games on the night, led by Cheng Nai-wen and Yang Dong-yi, who had three each and three combined RBIs. An amazing ten of the 17 hits collected by the Lions went for extra-bases, with a homer by Tilson Brito and nine doubles, which was how the extremely efficient Lions lineup managed to score 13 runs off 17 hits.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The contest began with the Lions jumping to a 2-0 lead in the top of the third on a sacrifice-fly by Yang Seng and an RBI-single by Kuo Dai-chi.
Brito’s solo blast, his league-leading seventh of the season, quickly made it 3-0 in the fourth, before Hsu Fong-bin’s two-run single in the same inning put the Lions ahead 5-0.
Against the sharp pitching of Pote, the T-Rex were held in check for most of the game, except when they were able to string together a single, a double and a triple at the bottom of the fourth for a pair of runs to avoid the shutout.
Suffering the one-sided loss for the T-Rex was starter Chen Jia-hong, who remained winless at 0-4 with six runs allowed on seven hits over four innings of work.
Elephants 8, Bulls 2
Back-to-back home runs by Chen “Golden Warrior” Chih-yuan and Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min in the top of the first set the tone early in the game, as the Brother Elephants rolled over the Sinon Bulls 8-2 in Hsinchu to snap a three-game losing skid.
It was the 18th time the duo had homered in the same game, bringing back sweet memories from their heyday when the Elephants won three straight titles to rule the league.
By the time the Bulls knew what had hit them in the fifth, the scoreboard already read 7-0 in favor of the Elephants.
The Bulls finally got on the board in the bottom of the fifth when veteran slugger Huang Chung-yi went deep against Elephants’ starter Kobayashi Ryokan for his first home run of the season to make it 7-1.
And they would go on to score once more in the game, while the Elephants tacked on another run in the eighth for the eventual 8-2 final score.
Picking up the impressive win along with the game-MVP honor was Kobayashi, who went the distance for the second time this year en route to his third victory for a 3-2 record. The Japanese right-hander allowed two runs on seven hits with a pair of strikeouts.
Tagged with the loss for the Bulls was newcomer Michael Connolly, whose debut was anything but spectacular. The two first-inning homers really shook up the American right-hander, who ended up allowing seven runs (five earned) on eight hits in four-and-two-third innings in a losing effort.
SSC Napoli’s Italian Serie A title hopes suffered a late setback on Sunday when they were held to a 2-2 draw at home against Genoa, setting up a thrilling season finale with closest rivals Inter just one point behind. The hosts remain top with 78 points, holding a slim lead over Inter, who won 2-0 at Torino earlier on Sunday, with two rounds remaining. To make matters worse for Napoli, midfielder Stanislav Lobotka, struggling with an ankle injury, was forced off just minutes after the match began. Scott McTominay delivered a perfect pass into the box where Romelu Lukaku got
Harry Kane opened the scoring ahead of lifting his first career silverware as Bayern Munich beat Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-0, with veteran Thomas Mueller playing his last home game for the club. Bayern officially won the title on May 4 when defending champions Bayer Leverkusen were held to a 2-2 draw at Freiburg, but were presented with the Bundesliga shield in front of their home fans at full-time. Dripping wet after being showered with beer by teammates, Kane said the title win was “an incredible feeling,” and hoped it would be “the first of many.” “It’s been lot of hard work, a lot of
Taiwanese e-sports veteran Lin “ET” Chia-hung yesterday successfully defended his King of Fighters XV title at this year’s Evolution Championship Series: Japan (EVO Japan), securing his second consecutive championship. Lin claimed victory with a 3-1 win over Japanese pro gamer “mok” in the grand final, repeating his earlier 3-1 win against the same opponent in the winners’ final. The 40-year-old earned a ￥1 million (US$6,897) cash prize at the two-day tournament, which drew 294 competitors. Mok, Lin’s toughest rival in the bracket, took home ￥400,000 as runner-up. Lin remains undefeated in match sets against mok in King of Fighters XV, holding a 10-0 record,
Batting great Virat Kohli yesterday announced his immediate retirement from Test cricket, just days before India name their squad for a tour to England. Kohli, who scored 9,230 runs in 123 matches at an average of 46.85, posted his decision on Instagram five days after India captain Rohit Sharma called time on his own Test career. Since making his debut in 2011, Kohli struck 30 hundreds and 31 fifties with a highest score of 254 not out, mainly batting at number four in the order. “It’s been 14 years since I first wore the baggy blue in Test cricket,” the
RSS