BASEBALL
Foul ball creates foul mood
A Taiwanese baseball fan got himself in hot water with his wife when he dropped their young daughter into the stadium seats in front of him in a bungled attempt to catch a foul ball during a televised game. The man, identified only by his surname, Bai, reached for the foul pop from his upper deck seat while holding the toddler in one arm during last week’s game between the Brother Elephants and the Lamigo Monkeys at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium. The ball bounded off Bai’s other arm as he lurched forward and let go of his child. “I was going to catch the ball using one hand, but I ended up lifting both hands and dropped my daughter,” he said later. The girl was not badly hurt, but her mother was clearly not amused, as shown in TV coverage of the game that has generated tens of thousands of clicks online. She shot her husband a piercing look of anger and scolded him. Afterward, she made it clear to reporters that he’d be in trouble for a while. “I am still upset at him because I think he wanted to catch the ball so badly that he dropped his own daughter,” she said.
AUSSIE RULES
Geelong beat Magpies
Geelong kicked the first goal after 10 seconds and withheld numerous -Collingwood comeback attempts to beat the Magpies 18.11 (119) to 12.9 (81) in the Australian Football League championship in Melbourne yesterday. A sellout Australian rules football crowd of 100,000 was expected for the grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Despite intermittent rain, the prediction wasn’t far off — 99,537 watched as the Cats prevented Collingwood from winning their second consecutive title and tie Carlton and Essendon for league championship titles at 16. It was Geelong’s ninth title overall and third in five years, having won previous league “flags” in 2007 and 2009. Collingwood led by three points at halftime, but Geelong kicked five goals in the third quarter to lead by seven going into the fourth quarter, which it dominated to give Chris Scott a championship in his first season as coach. The loss was a disappointing end to Mick Malthouse’s 28-year career as an AFL coach. He led Collingwood to three previous grand finals before winning last year’s title with the Magpies. Geelong forward Steve Johnson kicked four goals, while forward Tom Hawkins and midfielder Jimmy Bartel, who was a member of the 2007 and 2009 Geelong championship sides, had three each. Travis Cloke kicked three early goals for Collingwood to keep the Magpies in the match early.
SOCCER
Stuttgart take fourth place
Dutchman Khalid Boulahrouz scored and set up another to help VfB Stuttgart win 2-0 at Kaiserslautern in Berlin on Friday and lift them up to fourth place in the Bundesliga. German forward Cacau tapped in Boulahrouz’s low cross seven minutes after the restart for his third goal of the season before the rugged defender added another with a deflected shot. The win took Bruno Labaddia’s team to 13 points from eight games, five behind leaders Bayern Munich. Kaiserslautern are just above the drop zone on five points. The hosts, who have won only once this season, came close in the first half with captain Christian Tiffert failing to beat Stuttgart keeper Sven Ulreich from close range and Richard Sukuta-Pasu firing wide. Israeli forward Itay Schechter then squandered three golden opportunities in the second half, missing from point blank range on each occasion.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier