Luther Hackman tossed eight strong innings of two-run ball, while Kuo Dai-chi and Marshall McDougall each drove in a pair of runs as the Uni-President Lions humbled the Sinon Bulls 6-2 at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to win the weekend series 2-1.
It was the third straight quality start for the US veteran, who remained unbeaten at 3-0 in the three starts he has had so far after spending more than a month on the sidelines at the start of the season with an injury.
As for McDougall, the pair of RBIs also upped his team-best total to 25 for the season, good enough for third-best in the league.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The visiting Cats actually fell behind 0-1 in the third inning when the Bulls scored their first run of the contest on a fielding error by Lions shortstop Wang Tzu-song.
After five scoreless innings, the Lions would finally wake up and pull off three runs in the sixth, courtesy of an RBI single by Kuo and a two-run double by McDougall.
Three more runs by the Lion offense in the seventh quickly upped their lead to an insurmountable 6-1.
Even though the home Bulls would plate a run in the eighth off Hackman, that was as close as they got as Jerome Williams retired the final three Sinon batters with a perfect ninth to preserve the win.
Bulls starter Eric Junge cruised through to the fifth inning unharmed with a one-hitter, but stumbled in the sixth with three allowed runs on four hits to lose his second game of the season.
ELEPHANTS 7, BEARS 4
The Brother Elephants scored three unanswered runs in the seventh and eighth innings to break a 4-4 deadlock and then held on to beat the La New Bears 7-4 at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu last night.
The win not only ended a two-game slide for the men in the golden uniform, but also avoided what would have been a three-game sweep at the hands of the Bears.
After Chen Chih-pong’s two-run single capped a three-run sixth that gave the Elephants a 4-1 lead, the Bears returned the favor by scoring three in the very next inning to tie the game at 4-4.
That was when the Elephants’ bats came alive once more as they mustered the next three runs to win it 7-4.
Carlos Castillo was credited with the win, while the loss went to the Bears’ Luis Villarreal.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
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