Back-to-back homers by Chung Chen-yo helped the La New Bears overcome a late-game deficit to top the visiting Yomiuri Giants of Japan 6-5 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Thursday night in Game 1 of a four-game series between the two squads.
The rookie outfielder, who went deep only three times during the regular season, nearly doubled his home run total in one contest by crushing an offering from Giants starter Kaneto Norihito for a solo shot in the bottom of the sixth before tattooing another off reliever Kimura Shota in the eighth for the game-turning two-run blast.
“You don’t get a chance to play them [a Japanese professional team] too often, so I just tried to keep myself loose and held nothing back,” Chung said after the game. His three RBIs accounted for 50 percent of the Bears’ total offense.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The highly anticipated showdown between the Bears and the minor leaguers of the Yomiuri Giants, advertised as the “Fight of the Century,” saw the hosts striking first in the bottom of the third when Lin Chih-sheng scored all the way from first on a liner to left by Chen Chin-fong that was misplayed by the Yomiuri leftfielder.
Trailing 0-1, the Giants evened things up in a hurry against Bears starter Hsu Wen-hsiung in the next inning on the strength of two doubles and a single in a 1-1 game.
After Chung’s solo blast made it 2-1 in favor of the Bears, Chen Fong-min would homer off Kaneto for two more runs to give the Bears a 4-1 cushion before the visitors answered with a four-run seventh, highlighted by Tsuburaya Hidetoshi’s two-run single off Bears reliever Lee Fong-hua.
Finding themselves trailing for the first time in the game, the Bears did not disappoint their fans as Chung rose to the occasion one more time with his second home run of the game to turn a 4-5 deficit into a 6-5 lead.
In came ace closer Jermaine van Buren, who retired the side in order in the top of the ninth to preserve the victory for the Bears.
Picking up the dramatic win was reliever Hsu Chih-hua, who entered in the top of the seventh to stop the Giants from doing further damage before throwing a hitless eighth to keep the Giants hitters at bay.
The win by the Bears marked the first victory for the Taiwanese in the last 10 attempts as the Japanese side had won nine in a row during three different visits to Taiwan over the past 19 seasons. The only other win that a Taiwanese team had claimed was the one won by the Weichuan Dragons in 1990.
BEARS 6, GIANTS 3
The Bears claimed a convincing win in Game 2 at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night.
UPCOMING GAMES
Next up for the victorious Bears will be Game 3 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium at 5pm today. The series finale is scheduled for 5pm tomorrow at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu.
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