Veteran pitcher Pan Wei-lun yesterday led the Uni-President Lions to consolidate their hold on first place in the standings with a 4-1 victory over the Brothers Baseball Club at Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium, while the Fubon Guardians defeated the Lamigo Monkeys 8-2 in Kaohsiung.
The Lions swept the three-game series against the Brothers from Friday through yesterday, enjoying the home crowd advantage in Tainan and picking up their fifth win in as many games last week.
Now in the second half of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) season, the Lions opened up a two-game lead over the Lamigo Monkeys, who are second in the standings after winning three of four games last week.
Lions starter Pan out-dueled Brothers pitcher Bryan Woodall by yielding only one run in six hits, putting his team ahead 2-1 when he departed in the seventh inning in favor of middle relief Wang Ching-ming.
Selected as the game’s most valuable player (MVP) for his efforts in shutting down the Brothers hitters, Pan improved his record to 4-3 this season, while Woodall was charged with the loss in giving up four runs on nine hits through six and one-third of an inning of pitching, to record an 11-8.
In Kaohsiung, all eyes were focused on Lamigo Monkeys slugger Wang “The King” Po-jung.
Wang, rated as the league’s top hitter, did not disappoint fans when he went 3-for-4 and blasted a homer.
It was his league-best 27th home run of the season to go with his 84 RBIs, which widened the gap against Brothers slugger Chiang Chih-hsiang, who is in second place with 21 homers and 74 RBIs.
Wang is having an outstanding season. He was voted last season’s MVP in the league and is in second place for total hits at 145, with a batting average of 0.403 for the season.
Second baseman Chen Ping-chieh and Guardians center fielder Kao Hsiao-yi are at the top of the batting order and accounted for most of the team’s offensive output with two hits each, driving in a total of five runs for the 8-2 triumph.
The Lamigo Monkeys on Friday rolled over the Guardians with a 6-4 win and on Saturday with a 13-4 thrashing.
The Guardians pitchers could not contain hot hitting by Wang, who clobbered two homers and a double among his four hits to finish with four RBIs and push his average back to more than 0.400 since Aug. 13.
Lamigo manager Hung Yi-chung said he wanted to mix up the lineup for this contest and inserted Wang into the leadoff hitter position.
“I had a good game, but it is all about focusing on hitting the ball. I do not feel much difference whether I hit in the clean-up or in leadoff,” Wang said.
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