Taiwan continued their dominance in this year’s World Port Baseball Tournament with victories over Cuba and Curacao at the Familiestadion in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Monday to improve to a 4-0 record.
In the day game of the day-night doubleheader, Taiwan humbled defending champions Cuba 3-1 thanks to a brilliant effort by starter Chen Kuan-ju, who went the distance for his team in a two-hit gem to deal the Cuba their second defeat of the tournament.
Other than a leadoff single to Cuba’s Rusney Castillo that led to the lone run in the game for Cuba, the southpaw out of Fu Jen Catholic University was virtually unhittable as he baffled the opposing hitters by changing his speed, with his sliders and changeups working flawlessly to complement his fastball.
“The offspeed pitches really worked well for me today,” Chen said after the game.
Offensively for Taiwan, Lin Han’s three-for-five hitting with an RBI led an attack that rang up nine hits against two hurlers. After being shut down by Cuba starter Yosvani Torres through the fourth, the Taiwanese bats finally came alive in the fifth with a run on three hits off Torres to tie the game at 1-1, before they skidded ahead in the seventh with another run on three more hits to take the lead for good.
“Talk about not having beaten the Netherlands for some time last Friday, I can’t remember ever beating Cuba,” Taiwan head coach Chen Wei-cheng said after the big win.
Curacao 1, Taiwan 7
In the night game of the doubleheader, Taiwan also found themselves trailing 0-1 after six innings of play, before erupting for seven unanswered runs to prevail in a 7-1 triumph.
Taiwan had several opportunities to score through the sixth, but failed to convert on each with runners being gunned down at the plate on two different occasions.
The poor luck finally ended when back-to-back hits by Huang Yi-kuen and Chen Wei-chih helped drive in the tying run in the seventh inning to set up a late-game scoring binge that sealed the win.
Lin Chen-hua entered the game one out into the seventh and he was credited with the win for his 2-2/3 innings of shutout relief, while the loss went to Curacao’s Caroll Servania.
The Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday downed the CTBC Brothers 2-1, handing the hosts their second consecutive loss in the best-of-seven CPBL Taiwan Series at the Taipei Dome. Monkeys’ ace starter Pedro Fernandez of the Dominican Republic dominated on the mound, cruising through six scoreless innings before giving up a run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning. He gave up only three hits and walked two batters in a 93-pitch outing, giving his Taoyuan-based team an edge. Offensively, the Monkeys’ leadoff batter Lin Li hit Brothers starter Brandon Leibrandt’s pitch over the center-field wall in the game’s first at-bat,
The tiny village club of Mjallby AIF on Monday won the top tier Swedish soccer league with a 2-0 away win at IFK Gothenburg, sealing the title with three rounds of matches remaining. Jacob Bergstrom and Tom Pettersson scored the goals in Mjallby’s 20th win in 27 league games. Mjallby has a population of fewer than 1,400 people and plays in an outdated 6,000-seat stadium with stands weathered by the winds of the Baltic Sea. “It’s a huge relief to experience this now, a relief with three games to go,” said Anders Torstensson, a former army officer and secondary-school teacher who coaches the
Jahmyr Gibbs was offered oxygen on the bench after a 78-yard run. He turned it down. Clearly, he was not out of breath. Gibbs on Monday scored on a long sprint in the second quarter, a five-yard spinning plunge in the third and accounted for a career-high 218 yards from the scrimmage to lead the Detroit Lions in a 24-9 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “You felt like this was coming,” Detroit coach Dan Campbell said. “This has been building.” The Lions (5-2) bounced back from a loss as they have done flawlessly for nearly three years, extending their NFL-long streak of 51 games
Rafael Leao on Sunday shot AC Milan to the top of Serie A with a brace in a 2-1 win over ACF Fiorentina who were enraged by the “scandalous” awarding of the penalty that decided the game. Portugal winger Leao pushed Milan one point ahead of local rivals Inter, SSC Napoli and AS Roma with a coolly taken spot-kick, given for what looked like a soft foul on Santiago Gimenez by Fabiano Parisi, with four minutes remaining. That goal capped a fine first league start of the season for Leao and came after he drew the hosts level with a brilliantly struck
RSS