CPBL: The La New Bears continued their winning ways by sweeping the two-game series against the Chinatrust Whales with a 12-9 win at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Sunday to boost their record to a league-best 9-2 in the second half.
The win capped a near-perfect week of play for the high-flying Bears who won three of the four games over the seven-day span by splitting a two-game set against the President Lions earlier in the week before taking two straight from the marine creatures.
Leading the way for the Bears offense was slugger Chen Chin-fong who went 7-for-14 with four RBIs in the week. The outstanding play by the former major leaguer not only improved Chen’s team-leading batting average to .358 (second best in the league behind the Brother Elephants’ Peng Cheng-min), but also gave him 54 RBIs to lead the league.
Also starring for the Bears was Huang “Easy” Long-yi who batted 3-for-4 with three RBIs to pick up his 91^st base hit of the season. The veteran outfielder needed only 60 games to reaching the 90-hit plateau, beating the old record for fastest to amass 90 in a single season at 61 games that had been shared by Tseng Kwei-chang in 1996, Rafaelito Mercedez in 1997, and Peng in 2004.
Picking up his league-leading 13th victory of the season for the Bears was starter Mike Johnson who remained unbeaten at 13-0 with a big win over the Lions in the Bears’ week-opener on Tuesday by pitching one-run ball on six hits over as many innings in a 4-1 win. The Bears were the lone team making a big push in the second half. With the hiring of coaching legend Hsu Sheng-ming as their manager last Thursday, the Sinon Bulls also showed their desire to contend for the second-half title after a disappointing first-half.
The new Sinon skipper who had managed the former Weichuan Dragons to three league titles in the late 1990s, as well as taking the Taiwan national team to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens before resigning as the Whales headman in 2005, will try to bring back the glories for the Bulls who won back-to-back titles as recently as 2005 before suffering consecutive losing seasons with a 48-49-3 record in 2006 and a league-worst 42-57-1 mark last year.
Boston Red Sox pitcher Connelly Early on Tuesday struck out 11 in five shutout innings to match a franchise record during his MLB debut against the Oakland Athletics. “Pretty sick performance,” teammate Romy Gonzalez said. “It was fun to watch.” The only other Red Sox starter to rack up 11 strikeouts in his first career game was Don Aase versus the Milwaukee Brewers on July 26, 1977. “It was amazing, just to go out there and have that first opportunity,” Early said after getting the win in a 6-0 victory. “A long day of travel yesterday and just getting to the field, seeing
Mikel Merino on Sunday scored a hat-trick as a majestic Spain thumped Turkey 6-0 away in World Cup qualifying, while a brilliant Florian Wirtz free-kick helped Germany beat Northern Ireland 3-1 to get their bid up and running. European champions Spain were in unstoppable form in the central Turkish city of Konya, claiming their second biggest-ever away win in World Cup qualifying as Arsenal midfielder Merino scored his first professional hat-trick. Barcelona playmaker Pedri Gonzalez opened the scoring inside six minutes and later completed the scoring, with Ferran Torres netting the visitors’ other goal. The quality of Merino’s strikes was remarkable, with his
ELEVEN STRIKEOUTS: Blake Snell allowed two singles and two walks against the Rockies as he ended a personal three-game skid with his first win since Aug. 16 Blake Snell on Wednesday struck out a season-high 11 in six innings, while Mookie Betts hit a grand slam in the eighth as the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Colorado Rockies 9-0 for their fourth straight win. Helped by their third series sweep of the Rockies this MLB season, the Dodgers increased their National League West lead to three games over the San Diego Padres, who lost 2-1 at home to the Cincinnati Reds. Betts went four for five with five RBIs, capped by his seventh career slam on a 3-0 pitch from reliever Anthony Molina to make it 8-0. Andy Pages and
‘DEVASTATED’: Argentina’s win was a reversal of their 28-24 defeat last week, with Australian forward Fraser McReight adding that ‘we did the same thing last week’ Argentina flyhalf Santiago Carreras punished an undisciplined Australia with 23 points off the tee as the Pumas held on grimly for a 28-26 win in Sydney yesterday to breathe new life into their Rugby Championship campaign. A try-fest beckoned in afternoon sunshine at Sydney Football Stadium, but Argentina needed only one through captain Julian Montoya, with Carreras doing the damage with seven penalties and a conversion in front of a sell-out crowd. A week after letting a 14-point lead slip in a 28-24 defeat to Australia in Townsville, Argentina saw most of a 21-point advantage erased in the final quarter as the
RSS