Lamigo Monkeys outfielder Chung “Yo-Yo Man” Cheng-yo unloaded nine bombs over the leftfield wall against Uni-President Lion slugger Kao Guo-ching’s five in the finals to run away with the title in this year’s Home Run Derby at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City last night.
The long-ball specialist out of the National Taiwan Sport University — whose list of distinguished alumni include current Major League pitcher Chen Wei-ying (the Baltimore Orioles) and former big leaguer Hu Chin-lung (the New York Mets) — became the first player in league history to defend the title in the Home Run Derby by taking five of the first eight pitches he faced to tie Kao’s mark, before settling with nine on the night to keep the winner’s bat for the second straight year.
“Wow, it’s hard to believe that no one has done it before. I’d like to thank coach Lin for feeding me some great pitches tonight,” Chung said after the event.
It was Lamigo Monkeys assistant coach Lin Chen-sheng who helped him win the event a year ago as well.
“Coach Lin did a great job in guiding me with his pitches, so all I had to do was follow his lead,” Chung explained after the home run-bashing contest.
Along with a stunning winner’s trophy and a winner’s bat, Chung also pocketed NT$100,000 in prize money. He also raised a total of 50 grams of pure gold for a local charity and donated NT$30,000 of his winnings to show his kind side off the field.
Chung’s quest for the repeat began with three blasts against the Brother Elephants’ Chang Min-yen’s one in the preliminary round, which featured 12 of the league’s top long-ball hitters in this year’s contest.
Then came the match against the Lions’ Deng Chih-wei, who fell short to Chung by a 12-3 margin to send the defending champ into the third round, where he needed only a pair of home runs to edge past teammate Hung Chen-yu to set up the rematch of last year’s contest against Kao.
Kao took the plate first as the challenger by grinding out five shots over the outfield wall to set the bar for Chung, which took the eventual champ only eight swings to match.
“When you are up against someone like [Chung], there is really not much I can do,” a humble Kao said after the contest.
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