Yilan County’s Chungdao High School made their first-ever E Sun Cup Baseball Championship title game by topping Greater Taichung’s Shi Yuan High School 2-1 in a semi-final clash at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City yesterday.
Chungdao, whose list of distinguished alumni includes Chinese Professional Baseball League standouts Deng Chih-wei and Lin Chen-hua, continued their amazing Championship run by holding a potent Shi Yuan lineup to a lone run to advance to the final.
The win followed a triumph on Saturday last week, when Chungdao blanked Yunlin County’s Mai Liao High School 3-0.
Leading the way for the victors yesterday was staff ace Lin Wei-chieh, who followed his complete-game shutout win over Yunlin County with 5-1/3 innings of one-run ball on seven hits to end his final game as a high-schooler on a high note.
Even though he will not get to play in today’s title game due to restrictions on consecutive game appearances for pitchers — to protect the players — yesterday’s victory was nonetheless special.
Chungdao broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fourth by plating a pair of runs against Shi Yuan starter Lai Chih-yuan with a pair of perfected executed suicide squeezes to take a 2-0 lead.
After five scoreless innings, Shi Yuan finally solved the Lin Wei-chieh puzzle and connected for a run on three hits in the top of the sixth to make it 2-1. Yet that was as close as they got before Lin Wei-chieh’s successor, Lin Chia-wei, promptly retired the next two batters to preserve Chungdao’s slim lead and seal the win.
PING CHENG 5, KAOYUAN 4
Taoyuan County’s Ping Cheng High School rallied from 0-4 down with five unanswered runs to defeat Greater Kaohsiung’s Kaoyuan High School in the other Championship semi-final in New Taipei City last night.
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