Ping Jen Senior High School of Taoyuan County punched their ticket into the title game of the PX Cup yesterday afternoon with a convincing 7-2 win over Chiayi Senior High School at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium.
The defending champs wasted little time getting to Chiayi starter Huang Yong-pu, with Lin Li drawing a leadoff walk off Huang and scoring two batters later on a two-out double by Fan Guo-chen to take a quick 1-0 lead.
After the underdogs from Chiayi managed to even things up with a run of their own off Ping Jen starter Wang Tseh-chun in the third, the local boys struck again in the fourth, this time on the strength of a double down the third-base line by Peng Ming-yu. They then tacked on a pair of runs each in the fifth and sixth to claim a 6-1 advantage.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Even though Chiayi mustered an unearned run off Ping Jen reliever Soong Wen-hua to pull within four of the defending champs, Soong calmly retired all but one of the final 10 batters he faced over the last three frames to pick up the win.
Leading the Ping Jen attack was Fan, who went a team-high two-for-three with a double and an RBI. He also scored two of the seven runs that Ping Jen dialed up off a Chiayi staff that needed four hurlers to stop the Ping Jen hitters.
Taking the loss was Chiayi starter Huang who allowed two runs on three hits and three walks over 3-1/3 innings of play.
Kao Yuan 8, Nan Ying 3
Ying Teh-rong’s perfectly executed suicide squeeze capped a four-run eighth that broke a 3-all tie wide open for Kao Yuan Vocational Senior High School as they beat Nan Ying Vocational Senior High School to reach today’s title game in yesterday’s second showdown.
Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday homered for the fifth consecutive game, tying a Los Angeles Dodgers franchise record. Yankees star Aaron Judge was the last player to homer in five consecutive games, accomplishing that feat last year. Ohtani, who leads the National League with 37 home runs, homered in the first inning off Minnesota Twins starter Chris Paddack. He hit a slow curveball 134m to center. He carried the bat midway down the first-base line and then did a bat flip. He did not hit a home run later in the game with the Dodgers trailing, but his presence was felt. With two outs
Ben O’Connor won Thursday’s monster Alpine stage to the ski resort of Courchevel as three-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar responded to attacks from Jonas Vingegaard and dropped him to cement his grip on the yellow jersey. With just three stages left before the race ends in Paris, Pogacar looks poised to retain his title, with a comfortable lead of more than 4 minutes over Vingegaard, a two-time champion. Stage 18 featured three extremely difficult ascents, including the 26.4km climb of the Col de La Loze to the finish. At 2,304m, La Loze is the highest summit in this year’s Tour. Two
Taiwan’s world No. 6 shuttler Chou Tien-chen yesterday defeated India’s H.S. Prannoy to advance to the quarter-finals of the China Open in Changzhou. It was former world No. 2 Chou’s eighth win in 14 matches against Prannoy, who had earlier this week lamented the age divide between him and up-and-comers, although he is only two years younger than 35-year-old Chou. The Taiwanese, who is seeded sixth at the tournament, rebounded from a close 21-18 loss in game 1 on Court 2 at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium. He bounced back to take the next games 21-15, 21-8 and set up a tough quarter-final
US top seed Taylor Fritz dropped an early yesterday morning marathon to Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina of Spain, while the UK’s Emma Raducanu and Canada’s Leylah Fernandez reached the semi-finals of the ATP and WTA DC Open. World number four Fritz, two points from victory in the ninth game, dropped the last five games in falling to the 26th-ranked Spaniard 7-6 (7/3), 3-6, 7-5 after three hours and five minutes in a match ending just before 2am. Davidovich-Fokina advanced to the semi-final against US fourth seed Ben Shelton, who beat sixth-seeded hometown hero Frances Tiafoe 7-6 (7/2), 6-4. Fritz, who had 20 aces and six