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.
‘DEVASTATED’: Argentina’s win was a reversal of their 28-24 defeat last week, with Australian forward Fraser McReight adding that ‘we did the same thing last week’ Argentina flyhalf Santiago Carreras punished an undisciplined Australia with 23 points off the tee as the Pumas held on grimly for a 28-26 win in Sydney yesterday to breathe new life into their Rugby Championship campaign. A try-fest beckoned in afternoon sunshine at Sydney Football Stadium, but Argentina needed only one through captain Julian Montoya, with Carreras doing the damage with seven penalties and a conversion in front of a sell-out crowd. A week after letting a 14-point lead slip in a 28-24 defeat to Australia in Townsville, Argentina saw most of a 21-point advantage erased in the final quarter as the
Captain Vijay Kumar led the way yesterday as the Hsinchu Titans claimed the Taiwan Premier League title at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), beating PCCT by 27 runs. The weather was a topic again, but not the rain that played a role in previous matches in the often-delayed tournament. Kumar, who made 80 not out from 63 deliveries, and teammate Vishwajit Kumar (58 from 43) rescued the Titans from a precarious state at the end of the power play in the T20 match. The visitors were put in to bat and struggled to 26-3 as PCCT
San Francisco Giants pitcher Teng Kai-wei impressed against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday despite an 8-1 loss in the opener of the team’s nine-game road trip. Teng, the only Taiwanese pitcher active in MLB, struck out five while allowing two hits and one walk over four innings at Chase Field to finish with a no decision, as the teams were tied 1-1 when he finished his outing. He surrendered the lone run of his outing in the bottom of the first, which began with a walk, a hit-by-pitch and two strikeouts. Diamondbacks leadoff hitter Geraldo Perdomo advanced to third on
Japanese fans soaked up the atmosphere on yesterday’s opening day of the world athletics championships in Tokyo, four years after being shut out of the same stadium for the pandemic-troubled Olympics. The Tokyo Games, postponed a year until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, took place amid the ghostly backdrop of empty stands, with fans barred to prevent the spread of infection. Japanese spectators were determined to make up for lost time as the world championships opened on a cloudy, muggy morning, with fans arriving before the race walk began at 7:30am. Hajime Kondo, a 41-year-old office worker from nearby Chiba, came to
RSS