Homering for the second time in as many days, Cheng Nai-wen connected on a three-run blast to lead the Uni-President Lions past the La New Bears 4-1 at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu on Saturday evening.
The third-year infielder, who was recently promoted from the Lions’ minor league squad, made the most of his big league call-up by batting a combined 7-for-15 with eight RBIs over the past five games to help his team win their third straight and fourth in the last five contests.
“I am seeing the ball a lot better than before,” Cheng said in a simple explanation for his recent offensive surge after Saturday’s triumph.
The freefalling Bears, who had lost six in a row heading into Saturday night’s match, actually struck first with a run in the top of the third on an RBI groundout by Jacob Cruz off Lions starter Luther Hackman.
The lead would last less than an inning, however, as the Lions answered with a four-run fourth against Bears starter Chang Chih-jia, capped by Cheng’s three-run shot to claim a 4-1 lead that would hold the rest of the way.
Failure to come up with the clutch hit cost the Bears the game as they outhit their Lions by a 9-7 margin, but managed to produce only one run in the game with nine total runners stranded, five of whom were in scoring position.
The Bears squandered a scoring opportunity in the fifth when they failed to score with runners on first and second and no outs when the runner on second was gunned down on a pickoff attempt before the Lions induced an infield fly and an inning-ending strikeout to keep the Bears out of the scoring gate.
Picking up the win was reliever Chang Chih-chiang, who entered in the fifth and pitched into and out of trouble with the help of a great defense to improve to 5-1 for the year.
ELEPHANTS 13, BULLS 0
Scoring early and often, the Brother Elephants roughed up the Sinon Bulls with a 13-0 shutout at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Saturday.
The men in their golden uniforms jumped all over Sinon starter Yang Jien-fu with a six-run first and went after his replacement Wu Cheng-shien with six more over the next two-and-one-third innings to take a commanding 12-0 lead through the fourth.
That was more then ample for starter Tsao Chin-hui, who tossed six scoreless innings of four-hit ball en route to his sixth win of the year.
With an offense that had averaged nearly 10 runs per game in the last five, it did not matter who the Elephants had on the mound because the generous run support would make a winner out of any pitcher, let alone Tsao, who carries the distinction as Taiwan’s first Major League hurler.
Chen Jifang hits the gym for at least two hours every day and has the physique to prove it. At nearly 70, she is being held up as a shining example as China orders its vast population to get fit and lose the bulge. The grandmother from Shanghai has become a minor celebrity in in the past few months after her newfound and unlikely love for working out made national headlines. After becoming a gym regular in December 2018, Chen lost 14kg in three months, and now sports the kind of flat stomach and toned muscles that people decades younger aspire to. She
’SO CONSISTENT’: The victory gave the world No. 1 and world No. 2 a 21-1 win-loss record and their fourth title of the season after successes in Brisbane, Dubai and Doha Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic on Sunday cruised to their fourth women’s doubles title of the season at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome in their first tournament back since the suspension of the WTA Tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The top seeds took just 63 minutes to complete a comprehensive 6-2, 6-2 victory over unseeded German-Romanian duo Anna-Lena Friedsam and Raluca Olaru at the Foro Italico. It was the Taiwanese-Czech pairing’s first outing since they won the Qatar Open in February. “After five months, you don’t know what to expect,” Strycova told the WTA Web site.
ANOTHER SCANDAL: Searches focused on several riders, including Dayer Quintana, a source said, while the two being held were reportedly a doctor and physiotherapist French police on Monday detained two people as part of an investigation into suspected doping in the Arkea-Samsic team at this year’s Tour de France, prosecutors announced. The probe is the first significant one in several years for the repeatedly scandal-hit tour, which on Sunday wrapped up in Paris with a victory for 21-year-old Tadej Pogacar, who became the youngest winner in more than a century. Prosecutor Dominique Laurens in Marseille said in a statement that an investigation was being carried out into a “small part” of France-based Arkea-Samsic, without specifying who had been placed in custody. Laurens added that the two
Former MLB pitcher Wang Wei-chung has signed the biggest contract with a local team in Taiwan’s professional baseball history, the Wei Chuan Dragons said yesterday. The 28-year-old left-hander signed a five-year US$2.08 million contract with the Dragons, team chairman Hsu Wen-fang told a news conference. It is the biggest contract in the CPBL’s 31-year history, surpassing a three-year, US$1.36 million deal Lin Chih-sheng signed in 2016 with the CTBC Brothers. Although the overall value of Wang’s deal set a new record, his average monthly salary of NT$990,000 (US$33,886) is lower than Lin’s pay of NT$1.2 million per month in 2017
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