Taiwan’s semi-professional Popcorn League is to hold the best-of-five championship series between Taiwan Cooperative Bank and Taipei this week, starting tomorrow.
The team representing Taipei, sponsored by Highwealth Construction, advanced to the final on Saturday after shutting out Taipower 5-0 at Taipei’s Tianmu Stadium.
Taipei earned the right to take on Taiwan Cooperative Bank, who finished in first place with the best overall record among the 10 teams.
The initial four games are to be played at 5pm tomorrow, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, while the fifth game is scheduled for 5pm on Monday next week, if needed. All contests are to be held at Tianmu Stadium.
In Taipei’s clincher on Saturday, pitcher Lin Yu-hsiang earned his MVP award after replacing Su Chun-jung in the first inning.
Lin pitched more than eight scoreless innings, yielded only six hits and picked up four strikeouts.
“I did not expect the coaches to call on me in the first inning, but our starting pitcher seemed to have some problems. I thought about just going inning by inning and seeing how far I could pitch. It was a surprise to go all the way for a shutout,” Lin said, adding that his entire pitching repertoire worked flawlessly.
“Taiwan Cooperative Bank has lots of experience and are very good at making adjustments. I will try to make them guess by mixing up my pitches and changing up my rhythm,” he added.
The Popcorn League, organized by the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association, begins in November and finishes in January, and aims to improve amateur baseball for the semi-professional clubs and the junior national team.
The other teams who took part this season were the Topco Falcons, the Chii-Lih Corals, the Taichung Athletics, New Taipei City, Taoyuan and Tainan.
In the playoff series, Taipei on Tuesday last week won the opener 4-2 over Taipower, then took a two-game lead the next day with an 8-5 victory.
Taipower stormed back on Friday with a 17-2 thrashing, but Taipei ended the series with Saturday’s shutout.
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