Chen Chih-wei’s sacrifice fly to right with a runner at the corner scored the tie-breaking run in the top of the ninth as the Sinon Bulls held on to edge past the Brother Elephants 4-3 at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night.
The win not only helped the Bulls bounce back from a pair of losses on Saturday in a sweep of the day-night doubleheader, but also salvaged what would have been a tough defeat by the Elephants as they squandered a two-run lead during the game and fell behind before rallying back to claim the victory.
Chang Jien-ming’s two-run blast off Elephant starter Lin Yu-ching got the Bulls on the board for a quick 2-0 advantage in the top of the third.
The score stood until the fourth before the men in the golden uniforms answered with a run in the bottom of the fifth on Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min’s double to lead the inning, and scored three batters later on a clutch two-out single by Chen Jiang-ho that made it 2-1.
The Elephants struck again for a pair of runs in the sixth to take a 3-2 lead, highlighted by a perfectly executed hit-and-run play by Chang Chih-hao, with speedster Chang Chih-wei at first and an erroneous throw by the Sinon defense that allowed Chang Chih-wei to score all the way from first.
However, the diehard Bulls simply would not go down easily as they scored another run in the eighth courtesy of the second error on the Elephant defense to notch the game up at 3-all to set up their ninth-inning rally.
Things looked good for the Elephants after starter Lin dodged a couple of bullets in the sixth and seventh when he escaped a bases-loaded jam and a two on-with-one out situation unharmed respectively to lead it 3-2.
However, the lead proved short-lived as the Elephants self-destructed by giving up the tying run on an error in the eighth to lose the lead and eventually the game in the ninth.
Picking up the win was reliever Lin Keh-chien, who entered with two outs in the eighth to keep the Elephants at bay before retiring the final three Brother batters in the ninth for his first win of the year.
Taking the loss was his counterpart Guan Da-yuan, who gave up the winning run in the ninth to drop to a 5-2 mark for the season.
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