Chen Guan-ren’s RBI double highlighted a four-run eighth for the Lamigo Monkeys as they rallied from three down to edge past the top-ranked Chinatrust Brothers 8-6 at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium last night.
It was a big hit for the veteran slugger against his former club as the struggling Primates looked to close the gap between them and the third-place EDA Rhinos in the standings midway through the second half of the season.
Lin Chih-sheng’s three-run home run off Brothers starter Lin Yu-ching in the opening frame spotted Lamigo starter Cheng Cheng-hao a 3-0 lead before Cheng even took the mound.
However, the three-run cushion proved insufficient as the Brothers erupted for six runs on four singles, two doubles and a triple in the bottom of the second to chase Cheng in a hurry.
The 6-3 score remained unchanged over the next five innings, with the Lamigo bullpen holding its ground and Lin Yu-ching doing his job to deny the opposing batters any scoring opportunity.
However, with the game and the weekend series on the line, the Primates promptly shifted into a different gear as they sent eight men to the plate to score four runs that turned a 6-3 deficit into a 7-6 advantage.
Lan Ying-luen’s timely single with runner in scoring position scored an insurance run for the Monkeys in the top of the ninth, which was enough for Kuo Chun-chieh to pick up his second win of the season, with closer Miguel Mejia tossing a scoreless ninth for his league-leading 24th save of the year.
Taking the loss was reliever Brad Thomas, who entered in the bottom of the eighth with one out and served up a single and a double to give up the lead.
He is now 1-3 for the season.
Elsewhere in the CPBL, the Rhinos-Lions game was postponed because of rain.
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