Close plays dominated CPBL action on Sunday with the Brother Elephants edging past the Sinon Bulls by a 2-1 margin at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu and the Uni-President Lions downing the La New Bears 3-2 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium.
Liao Yu-cheng of the Elephants outpitched his Sinon counterpart Lin Keh-chien in a battle between two nine-game winners by tossing one-run ball over eight solid innings of work to become the league’s first local ten-game winner.
“It’s one of those games that no one deserves to lose,” Liao said after the game.
Lin, who also lasted through the eighth in a quality start, allowed a pair of early runs in the third, which turned out to be the difference in the game. It took the Elephants three straight singles, all with two outs in the top of the third, to score two runs off the Sinon rookie sensation.
Huang Cheng-wei led off the inning with a single and made it to second two outs later before scoring on Chou Si-chi’s liner off Lin to right to put the Elephants 1-0 up.
After Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min followed with another single to put the runners at the corners, Chen Guan-ren came through with a clutch single that gave his team a 2-0 advantage.
Liao, who took a 2-0 shutout one out into the sixth before giving up an RBI single to Sinon’s Lin Yi-chuan, had one of his best games of the season, improving to 10-5 for the year with a team-best 3.37 ERA.
LIONS 3, BEARS 2
Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen earned his 10th win of the season by throwing one-run ball over seven strong innings to lift the Uni-President Lions past the La New Bears 3-2.
The win gave Du Du double-digit wins for a record-setting seven straight seasons, breaking the old mark of six set by former Bulls great Osvaldo Martinez (2000-2005).
He also became the eighth man to reach the 700-strikeout plateau in league history when he fanned seven to give him 705 in six-plus seasons.
The Lions capitalized on a wild Jose Silva by drawing an unusual five walks off the La New starter to score two runs without even getting a hit off the former major leaguer.
They tacked on a third run in the seventh on Pan Wu-hsiung’s two-out single to make it 3-1, which proved crucial as the Bears rallied for a run in the ninth before falling short to lose this one by a run.
TO THE TOP: After securing the international title on Saturday, Team Taiwan were to face Las Vegas to potentially win their 18th Little League World Series championship A team from Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School won the Little League Baseball World Series’ international title on Saturday by defeating Aruba 1-0 in the annual baseball tournament held in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Taiwan team, competing under the name Chinese Taipei, were after press time last night to face a team from Las Vegas, Nevada, which beat a team from Fairfield, Connecticut, in the US championship 8-2. Taiwan are seeking to win their first Little League Baseball World Series title since 1996. “Really haven’t taken a moment to data dump right now on Taiwan,” Nevada manager T.J. Fescher said. “They’re a
Marc Marquez continued his winning streak as he cruised to victory in the Hungarian GP sprint by two seconds on Saturday night to pad his championship lead. It was a seventh straight Sprint victory for the Spaniard, who has also won the last six longer Sunday grand prix races on his factory Ducati. Fabio Di Giannantonio, an Italian with the VR46 Ducati satellite team was a distant second at Balaton Park, followed by his team-mate and compatriot Franco Morbidelli third. Marquez, a six-time world champion, started the race from pole position. “I felt someone really close on the first corner, from there I
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Russian Diana Shnaider continued her impressive winning streak in tour-level finals at the Monterrey Open on Saturday, beating compatriot Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the WTA 500 event’s final. Shnaider had little trouble in the opening set but struggled in a topsy-turvy second, as Alexandrova clinched the set’s fifth and decisive break at 5-4 to force a decider. Third-seed Shnaider carved out an advantage early on in the third set when she broke Alexandrova in the first game and held serve to go 2-0 up, an advantage she would not relinquish. World No. 12 Shnaider is now unbeaten in her last five