Kuo Ming-ren’s two-run blast capped a three-run seventh as the dmedia T-Rex defense held off a tough rally by the La New Bears to run away with a 5-4 win at the Hsinchu Municipal Baseball Stadium on Friday night.
The fourth-year shortstop from Taitung County connected with a knee-high fastball from Bears reliever Hsu Chih-hua and drove it over the rightfield wall to give his club a 5-2 advantage.
The three-run lead was what eventually saved the T-Rex, because the Bears rallied for two ninth-inning runs on a pair of solo homers by Huang “Easy” Long-yi and Gary Burnham and actually had the tying on first with two outs before having the runner gunned down at the plate on a busted play for the final out to end the game.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
The showdown between brothers Hsu Yu-wei of the Bears and Chang Hsien-chih, who have different surnames, was a classic pitchers’ duel. Chang took a 2-0 lead into the top of the sixth before the Bears tied it up at 2-2 on three straight base hits in the top of the sixth.
Dmedia skidded ahead on an RBI-groundout by Chen Chih-pong before Kuo’s two-run shot made it 5-2 to set the stage for the late-game drama in the ninth.
Picking up his first win of the year in only his second game appearance was Hsu Chu-jien with a scoreless seventh to beat Hsu Yu-wei, who allowed four runs on six hits over 6-1/3 innings in his fourth defeat of the season.
LIONS 6, ELEPHANTS 3
The Uni-President Lions continued their winning ways by topping the Brother Elephants 6-3 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday for their third straight win of the week.
Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen improved to 10-1 for the year with seven solid innings of play, allowing three runs on eight hits, including a solo homer to the Elephants’ Chen “Golden Warrior” Chih-yuan in the bottom of the third to tie a league mark for consecutive seasons with double-digit wins at six.
The game was actually a lot closer than the final score would indicate, as the Elephants managed to load the bases in the bottom of the eighth and place runners at the corners with the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth.
But failure to come up with the clutch hits necessary and a deadly base-running error by outfielder Chen Huai-shan, who left the bag too early on a sacrifice-fly attempt in the eighth, ultimately cost them the game.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later