Cashing in on mistakes made by the EDA Rhinos, the Uni-President Lions made it two wins in a row by taking Game 2 of the Taiwan Series 4-2 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to claim a 2-0 lead in the annual Fall Classic.
Tsai Ming-chin’s wild pitch with runners on second and third brought home the go-ahead run that broke a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the eighth inning. He would walk home the insurance run for the Lions on the ensuing at-bat that put the game away.
“There’s no doubt that [the wild pitch by Tsai] really hurt us, but our inability to bring home the runs when we had the chance was the real killer,” Rhinos coach Tseng Chih-cheng said, referring to his troops’ two-for-10 hitting with runners in scoring position.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
It was the second straight game that the Rhinos outhit the Lions, but still lost.
Starter Luo Ching-lung of the Lions pitched into and out of trouble over the first two frames when he escaped a one-out-with-two-on jam in the first inning and a one-out-with-one-on jam in the second to strand all three runners. That bought him just enough time to settle in and pitch two-run ball through the seventh in a performance worthy of the games Most Valuable Player honor.
“I knew if I kept the game close our offense would eventually come around and win it for us,” Luo said after the game.
Even though he was not credited with the win, with the honor going to his successor Fu Yu-kang, his joy was equally as sweet as the Lions put themselves are two victories shy of the title.
On the defensive side the Lions also had the upper hand, with Chen Yung-chi coming up with several spectacular plays to rob the potent Rhinos offense of at least two base hits.
Deng Chih-wei’s sharp single to left that scored the runner from second put the Cats on the board, before the visitors answered with a pair of runs of their own in the top of the fourth on two extra-base hits and a single off Luo.
The 2-1 lead for the Rhinos lasted only two innings, with Kao “Green Tank” Guo-ching connecting on a two-out double off Rhinos starter Nick Green that evened the score in the bottom of the sixth to set the stage for the game-deciding eighth.
“We kept our patience against their pitchers at the plate to put us in the best position to win and that’s what happened,” Lions coach Chen Lien-hung said after the game.
His Cats really made the most of their home-field advantage by taking the Rhino pitchers deep into the count to wear them down.
With only a handful of teams managing to overcome a 0-2 deficit in the best-of-seven series in history, the Rhinos must put the losses behind them and play their own game in what is a must-win Game 3, as another loss would virtually put the title out of sight.
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