Tsai Tsung-yo drove in a career-high four runs on a 2-for-3 night to lift the La New Bears past the Uni-President Lions 6-4 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Wednesday night, starting the week with a big win for the home Bears.
The win not only ended a four-game winning streak for the red-hot Lions, who had won nine of their last 10 heading into Wednesday’s contest, but also extended the Bears’ winning run to four in a row. The Bears cut the league-leading Lions’ lead in the standings to 1.5 games with seven games remaining in the first half of the season.
Kao Guo-ching’s solo homer leading off the top of the second gave the Cats an early 1-0 lead, only to see the Bears answer with four runs of their own in the bottom of the same inning, highlighted by a two-run single with the bases loaded by Tsai.
The Bears widened their lead by two in the third with another two-run single by the third-year infielder to make the score 6-1, which lasted all the way to the top of the ninth before the Lions made things interesting by loading up the bases with no outs against Bears reliever Geng Bo-hsuen.
That prompted skipper Hong Yi-chung to send in ace closer Jermaine Van Buren, who gave up three runs on back-to-back singles to Jose Castillo and Kao that made it 6-4 before retiring the next three hitters to preserve the win.
Picking up the win was Bears starter Chang Chih-jia, who pitched his side into and out of trouble throughout the 5-2/3 innings he worked to allow only a run on eight hits and a pair of walks.
Taking the loss was Lions starter Pan Jung-rong, who lasted just 2-2/3 innings with six allowed runs on eight hits in his first loss of the year.
ELEPHANTS 4, BULLS 0
Behind the stellar pitching of Tsao Chin-hui, the Brother Elephants blanked the Sinon Bulls in Taichung on Tuesday evening to nip a four-game losing skid.
The former major leaguer tossed six shutout innings of five-hit ball in a rare midweek appearance that drew more than 5,000 spectators to the ballpark.
They were rewarded by seeing their hero bounce back nicely from a tough loss to the Bears last Saturday, when he allowed two runs on five hits in just two innings.
Offensively for the victorious Elephants, eight of the nine starters had a hit in the game, with Wang Jin-yong and Liu Geng-hsin leading the pack with an RBI apiece off game-loser Lin Keh-chien.
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Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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