A pair of big innings by the Uni-President Lions lifted them past the La New Bears in a 9-1 trouncing at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium last night, avenging an embarrassing 7-0 shutout loss to the Bears the night before for the defending champs.
Hsu Sheng-jeh’s bases-clearing three-run double capped a five-run spurt for the Lions as they broke a scoreless tie wide open in the fourth before tacking on four more runs in the fifth to enjoy a comfortable 9-0 lead.
SOLO HR
Lin Chih-sheng’s solo blast off Lions starter Wang Jing-ming in the sixth gave Bears fans something to cheer about. That was the lone spotlight that Bears hitters enjoyed against the rookie right-hander, however, as Wang held them to three sparse singles over seven strong innings en route to his second win of the season with reliever Lin Cheng-fong tossing a scoreless eighth and ninth to close out the deal.
FIRST LOSS
Suffering his first loss of the season was Bears starter Luis Villarreal of the US who cruised through the first three innings unharmed before surrendering a double and four walks to spark what ended up being a five-run fourth. He would leave the game before finishing the inning with all five of the runs charged to him.
Offensively for the victorious Cats, Chuang Jing-heh also had a big day at the plate in addition to Hsu as he drove in three runs on 1-for-3 hitting, highlighted by a two-run single in the fifth.
The two teams will meet once more in the series-finale this afternoon with each team having won one game apiece. The winners will claim the series by a narrow 2-1 margin.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
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