Back-to-back walks followed by a pair of hit batsmen and a wild pitch led to three runs in the top of the 11th for the Brother Elephants as they went on to defeat the Uni-President Lions 8-5 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium on Thursday night to split the two-game set against their archrivals from the south.
Lions reliever Chang Chih-chiang entered to start the top of the 11th and got two quick outs before surrendering a seemingly harmless single to the Elephants’ Wang Sheng-wei.
That was when things took a nasty dive south for the normally reliable side-armer as he walked the next two batters to load up the bases before hitting Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min on the leg and Chen Guan-ren on the helmet to allow two runs to score and trigger an automatic ejection by home plate umpire Chiang Chuen-wei.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
In came a rusty Chuang Jing-heh, who threw a wild pitch to allow the third run of the inning to score, which gave the Elephants an 8-5 lead, to which they held on until the end.
Cheng Nai-wen’s bases-loaded single with two outs in the bottom of the seventh broke a 3-all gridlock to give the Lions a 5-3 lead, only to see his bullpen return the favor in the very next inning as Kao Jien-san issued a single and a walk in the top of the eighth before Lin Yueh-ping served up a two-run single to Wang to tie the game at 5-all.
Neither team would score over the next two innings, with the Elephants’ Tsao Jung-yang holding his ground against his former team and the Lions’ Lin and Shen Bo-chang retiring the side in order in the ninth and 10th respectively to set the stage for the late-game drama.
Picking up the win was Elephants setup man Matt Perisho, who tossed a hitless 10th for his fourth win of the year, while Chang took the loss for failing to keep his pitches over the plate.
BULLS 11, BEARS 4
The Sinon Bulls avenged a bitter loss in extra-innings on Wednesday with a convincing win over the La New Bears on Thursday night at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium, nipping a three-game slide.
Yang Jien-fu (3-9) pitched 5-2/3 innings of two-run ball on three hits to earn his third win of the year, while the Bears’ Hsu Wen-hsiung fell to an 8-11 mark for allowing four runs over three frames.
The Bulls scored at least a run in every inning except the ninth, racking up 16 hits in the process.
The Greek basketball league finals between Panathinaikos and Olympiakos were suspended by the government on Monday following on-court scuffles involving rival security teams. The best-of-five series is at 1-1. The third game, scheduled for today, has been postponed. The owners of both clubs were summoned to meet with the country’s sports minister. They “will be asked to provide explicit guarantees that this situation will be brought to an end. If not, this year’s championship will be definitively canceled,” government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said. “There can be no tolerance for such pathological phenomena of violence and delinquency.” In online posts, the owners of Panathinaikos and
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