Taoyuan rallied from two down in the bottom of the 10th with three unanswered runs to edge past Tainan 5-4 in the semi-finals of the E.Sun Cup at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City yesterday to reach the title game for the fifth straight year.
The win might not have come as pretty as coach Wu Po-hung had hoped, with his team clinching it on a walk-off passed-ball that scored the game-winner from third, but it was a very sweet win nonetheless as Taoyuan showed tremendous resilience by overcoming several obstacles to show what they were made of.
Contrary to all five of their previous wins in which they never trailed, the four-time defending champions fell behind by two twice against underdogs Tainan, but managed to fight back on both occasions to prevail.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“It was a real big win for us, because we never quit out there,” Yeh Wen-chi said.
The Taoyuan starter did not hang his head after giving up two runs in the top of the sixth to break a scoreless tie and kept his team in the game long enough for the Taoyuan offense to half the deficit with a run in the bottom of the inning, before plating the game-tying run in the eighth to force the 2-2 tie into extra innings.
Even though Yeh did not pick up the win despite tossing nine outstanding innings of two-run ball, he was definitely one of the top contributors in his team’s dramatic come-from-behind victory.
NEW TAIPEI CITY 6, KAOHSIUNG 3
In the other semi-final, New Taipei City took an early 3-0 lead after three innings against Kaohsiung and doubled it to 6-0 after the sixth, before holding off a late rally to run away with the win.
Starter Tseng Chi broke a personal 0-2 record against Kaohsiung by throwing 5-2/3 innings of one-run ball to keep the Kaohsiung hitters at bay long enough for the win.
“It’s great to be able to finally beat [Kaohsiung] in my final try,” Tseng said after the pitching in his final high-school game.
He will likely sign a minor league contract with a US major league team later this year.
Offensively for the victors, Chen Hu’s two-run blast in the bottom of the third highlighted an attack that teed off against the Kaohsiung pitching by ripping 13 hits on the day to get the job done.
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