Esmerling Vasquez tossed six innings of two-run ball and Fang Keh-wei homered on a three-for-five night with three RBIs as the EDA Rhinos roughed up the Uni-President Lions 10-2 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to take the weekend series on the road against the defending champions.
It was the first win of the season for the Dominican native, who spent four seasons in the major leagues in the US, before agreeing to terms with the Rhinos at the start of this season.
The righty also fanned six, while walking one in an impressive outing to prove his worth for the Rhinos.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
Offensively for the victors, the night belonged to Fang, who made the most of his second start behind the home plate for the Rhinos, who have won three straight after starting off the season with a dismal 0-3 record.
After two quiet innings, the Rhinos were the first to strike against Lions starter Nelson Figueroa with Fang’s solo blast in the top of the third to make it 1-0.
That proved to be the beginning of a rough night for the Lions veteran, who ended up with the loss and six runs charged against him (four earned) on 10 hits to drop to 0-2 for the season.
Trailing by six after five frames, the Cats finally got on the board in the bottom of the sixth when Liu Fu-hao and Kuo Dai-chi connected off Vasquez with runners in scoring position to avoid a shutout at home.
MONKEYS 1, ELEPHANTS 0
The contest between the Lamigo Monkeys and the Chinatrust Brother Elephants at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei was suspended in the bottom of the fifth with the Monkeys leading 1-0 due to heavy rain.
Play will resume at 2pm this afternoon in the first game of a double-header, before the two squads take the field again for the second game at 5:05pm.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
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