Christopher Lee Mason tossed nine innings of one-run ball and Lin Hong-yu drove in three runs in a three-for-four effort as the La New Bears defended their own turf with a convincing 9-1 win over the Brother Elephants at Chengcing Lake Baseball Field in Kaohsiung County yesterday afternoon.
It was the fourth straight win for the right-hander from the US, who pitched a complete game, improving to 4-1 for the season, while Lin raised his batting average to a league-best .349 by busting out for three hits and as many RBIs.
The win not only avoided what would have been an embarrassing three-game sweep by the last-place Elephants for the rambunctious Bears, who dropped both games in the day-night doubleheader on Saturday, but also nipped a three-game slide for them in the process.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The home team snapped a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the fourth inning when Chen Yen-fong came through with a big two-out double off Elephants starter Jim Magrane that gave the Bears a 3-1 lead.
They would increase their advantage an inning later with four more runs that chased Magrane from the game, before sealing the deal with a pair of runs in the seventh to conclude all the scoring.
Other than the lone run that they managed against Mason in the top of the second, courtesy of Chang Chih-hao’s RBI-groundout that scored Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min from second, the game was all Bears as Mason scattered only five hits over nine sharp innings of work.
Both teams will have today off before the Bears pay a visit to the Uni-President Lions in Tainan tomorrow evening in a battle between the two powerhouses down south, while the Elephants will play host in Hsinchu to the Sinon Bulls on Wednesday night.
BULLS 12, LIONS 5
The Sinon Bulls also avoided being swept by the Uni-President Lions in their three-game series over the weekend with a 12-5 trouncing of the Cats at Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium yesterday afternoon.
Sinon set a new club record for most runs in a single inning with eight during the second, pounding out five hits on top of four walks and an error against two Lions pitchers.
That was more than enough for starter Lin Chi-wei, who cruised through five innings unharmed, before surrendering an unearned run in the sixth for his league-leading fourth win of the season.
Trailing 12-1 heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Lions mustered four meaningless runs off Sinon reliever Lindsay Gulin to make the final score more respectable, but it was too little, too late for the defending champions as they lost by seven runs to drop to 11-14.
Lions starter Chen Yi-huan was charged with the loss for allowing six runs on five hits and two walks. He was pulled after failing to record an out against eight straight Sinon hitters in the second in a rather forgettable outing.
Also See: Rays sting Blue Jays in eighth inning
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
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
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
Mitch Brown finally had enough as he watched unfolding coverage of yet another case of homophobic abuse in the Australian Football League (AFL), and decided it was time to change the narrative. Brown contacted the Daily Aus with a message that the online news site published yesterday: “I played in the AFL for 10 years for the West Coast Eagles, and I’m a bisexual man.” In almost 130 years of top-flight competition in Australia’s homegrown football code, no past or active male player had publicly identified as bisexual or gay. Aussie Rules was a long way behind other types of
RSS