CPBL fans in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東) were treated to a rare baseball feast on Thursday night, as the Uni-President Lions demolished the Brothers Baseball Club 22-13 in a record-breaking game.
It was the first time a CPBL game has been played at the Luodong ballpark in five years and the two teams did not disappoint the capacity crowd as they combined for 41 hits, including four home runs and 10 doubles.
With their bats pummeling the Brothers’ pitches, the Uni-President Lions cranked out 22 hits and scored 22 runs, setting a new franchise record for the most runs in a game. The previous record was 21 runs.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Both sides turned up their offense to push baserunners home for a total of 35 runs, which was the second-highest total in CPBL history.
Center fielder Luo Kuo-lung took charge for the Lions, with one home run and two doubles among his six hits, to go with eight RBIs and five runs.
The haul was not only a career high for Luo, but also tied the league’s record for a regular-season game.
The CPBL said that it had not scheduled a game at the Luodong ballpark for the past five years because it is a small venue with a capacity of 5,000 people.
Due to a lack of regular use, the Yilan County Government had to make repairs to the ballpark before the game, such as fixing up the dressing rooms and making sure the field was ready.
However, the fans’ explosive enthusiasm seemed too much for the aging facility to handle, when in the bottom of the sixth inning the ballpark’s electricity grid overloaded, plunging the game into darkness.
Spectators took out their mobile phones for lighting, while the teams’ cheerleaders started an impromptu music concert.
The game resumed after a 30-minute delay.
After the resumption of play, the hits kept coming, with both sides piling on 10 more runs in the final three frames.
The game ended after five hours, which was the longest game so far this season.
Yilan County sports officials apologized for the blackout and promised to provide more funding for maintenance and repair work at the ballpark, which the teams said was not up to the standard they are used to.
In Thursday’s other contest, “Taiwan Big Cannon” Chen Chin-feng slammed a three-run homer to lead the Lamigo Monkeys over the EDA Rhinos in a 14-10 victory at home in Taoyuan.
Chen, who is widely acknowledged as Taiwan’s best hitter in international games and is scheduled to retire at the end of the current season, has been drawing large crowds throughout his final campaign.
He went two-for-two, with a homer in the sixth inning — his 13th this season — and a single in the eighth inning to drive in a run for four RBIs.
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