The Brother Elephants capitalized on a fielding error by La New rookie Lin Chih-ping in the 12th to score the game-winner as they topped the Bears 4-3 in a four-and-a-half hour marathon in Tianmu on Sunday evening.
The win nipped a six-game winning streak for the previously red-hot Bears and helped the Elephants avoid a sweep in the three-game weekend series.
The highly anticipated showdown between the staff ace for both squads, Liao “the Golden Submarine” Yu-cheng of the Elephants and Aaron Rakers for the Bears lived up to its billing as the scoreboard read 0-0 through the top of the sixth before Rakers allowed back-to-back singles to start off the bottom of the inning, leading to a pair of runs for the Elephants.
The Bears got a run back in the seventh off Elephants reliever Tsao Jung-yang after Liao was forced to leave the game with a leg cramp.
After the Elephants tacked on what seemed to be an insurance run in the eighth to reclaim a two-point lead, the Bears answered with Pan Chung-wei’s two-run blast off closer Ryan Cullen in the ninth, forcing the game into extra innings.
Elephants reliever Mai Jia-rei earned a win by tossing two scoreless innings in the extra session to beat his counterpart Hsu Ming-jeh, who breezed through the 10th and 11th unharmed before running into trouble in the 12th.
BULLS 6, LIONS 4
Cheng Da-hong’s three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth rallied the Sinon Bulls from two down to defeat the Uni-President Lions 6-4 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Sunday.
It was the second straight day the veteran slugger out of Chinese Culture University played the hero, with his clutch double forcing a tie to set up the Bulls’ dramatic comeback.
As for the free-falling Lions, things could not have been worse as they suffered their seventh straight loss for the first time in 19 years.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
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
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier