Rookie slugger Yu Shien-ming's line-drive single off Macoto Cobras reliever Lin Ying-jeh, followed by rightfielder Yang Rei-chih's fielding error in the bottom of the 10th scored the winning run for the Sinon Bulls as they beat the Cobras 2-1 in Game 1 of the Chinese Professional Baseball League's Taiwan Series on Saturday.
The 14,000-plus fans on hand at the Douliou City Baseball Stadium in Douliou were treated to a classic low-scoring thriller where the defending champs overcame a 0-1 deficit to edge past the Cobras.
Neither lineup was able to do much offensively in the early going against the strong pitching of starters Lenin Picota (Bulls) and Lin "Little Chick" En-yu (Cobras), leaving the Cobras clinging to a 1-0 lead through the first five innings.
PHOTO: CPBL
Lin had a no-hitter going to slightly top Picota's two-hit bid for a 1-0 lead through the fifth.
It took a clean double to deep-left by Bulls catcher Yeh Jung-chang leading off the bottom of the sixth to break up Lin's no-hit bid, before fellow shortstop Chang "Red Monkey" Jia-hao followed with an RBI single in the same inning to knot the game up at 1-all.
Even though the Cobras had runners in scoring position in the seventh and eighth innings, they could never come up with the clutch hit to bring them home.
After a Bulls' error allowed the Cobras leadoff man to reach first base in the top of the eighth inning, outfielder Chiou Chang-rong hit into a double play on the next at-bat, wasting what would have been a run-scoring single by cleanup man Hsieh Jia-shien moments later.
The Cobras' lone run of the game came in the top of the second inning on an RBI ground-out by catcher Wu Jau-hui that scored Chuang Jing-ho from third base after a throwing error by Bulls shortstop Chang Jia-hao that allowed Chuang to reach second with no outs earlier in the inning.
The Bulls also struggled.
After Chang knocked in the game-tying run in the sixth inning, the Bulls also had a great scoring opportunity in the seventh when first baseman Hsu Guo-long smashed a pitch from Lin En-yu for a one-out double.
But back-to-back ground-outs kept the score deadlocked until Yu's late-game heroics.
Reliever Jorge Cortez pitched scoreless ninth and 10th innings for the win, while Lin Ying-jeh took the loss for yielding an unearned run in two innings of relief work.
There were a combined total of seven errors in the game -- four by the Bulls and three by the Cobras.
"Baseball is all about mental toughness," Cobras manager Kuo Tai-yuan said after the game. "Even though they ended up making one more error than we did, our last error was the one that hurt us most.
I'm proud of our guys for their hard work in getting us here, no matter what happens on the field," Kuo said.
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