Jim Magrane tossed eight strong innings of one-run ball, Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min went a solid three-for-four with a pair of doubles and an RBI, and the Brother Elephants defeated the Sinon Bulls 4-1 at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium yesterday afternoon.
The win avenged back-to-back losses to the Bulls on the two previous nights, avoiding a three-game sweep at the hands of the league-leaders.
The men in the golden uniforms wasted little time getting to Sinon starter Lindsay Gulin with consecutive doubles by “Chia Chia” and Chou Si-Chi to plate their first run of the game in the bottom of the second.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUN, TAIPEI TIMES
DOUBLE
Even though the Bulls answered in the top of the third when Chen Chih-wei led off the inning with a double and scored two batters later on Chang Jien-ming’s RBI-single up the middle to tie the game up at 1-1, that was as close as they got.
RIGHTY
American right-hander Magrane quickly settled in and shut down the Sinon attack the rest of the way by allowing only two more hits through the eighth to give his offense a chance to help him win his league-leading third game of the season.
The go-ahead run for the Elephants came in the bottom of the fourth when Huang Shih-hao came up big with a single to right-center to score Peng, who smoked a double down the third-base line to lead off the inning and advanced to third one out later.
Peng and Huang would drive in one more run each in the fifth, making it 4-1 in favor of the Elephants, a lead they held all the way to the final out of the contest.
Suffering his first loss of the season was Gulin, who lasted only 4-1/3 innings with four allowed runs on nine hits in a disappointing outing.
His offense did not exactly stand behind him, scoring only one run off the stingy Elephant pitching to lose one long before the final out in the ninth.
BEARS 8 LIONS 3
Five runs in the top of the fourth broke a 1-all tie wide open to help the La New Bears trip up the Uni-President Lions in an 8-3 final at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium yesterday.
The victory clinched the three-game weekend series for the Bears who had been roughed up by the Lions the night before in a 9-1 loss.
The top of the order did all the damage for the Bears with Shih Yen-wei, Yu Jin-deh and Lin Chih-sheng accounting for seven combined hits with three RBIs on the night, which easily made a winner out of starter Christopher Lee Mason.
The 25-year-old from North Carolina improved to 2-1 for the year, pitching six solid innings of one-run ball.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Brentford striker Yoane Wissa says he wants to leave the English Premier League club and that it is “unduly standing in my way.” A day before the end of soccer’s summer transfer period, Wissa posted a lengthy statement on social media yesterday criticizing Brentford for rejecting an apparent offer from another Premier League club despite his willingness to switch between the teams. Wissa, a reported target for Newcastle, is yet to play for Brentford this season and had already removed any association with the club from his Instagram account. Yesterday, the 28-year-old DR Congo international took it a step further on the social
RSS