Chu Hong-seng’s walk-off single with a runner on second scored the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth as the Brother Elephants rallied from as many as seven down with eight unanswered runs to top the Sinon Bulls 13-12 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Wednesday evening.
The seesaw battle that featured four lead-changes and a season-high of 35 combined hits between the two clubs saw the visiting Bulls jump 2-0 ahead in the opening frame on RBI singles by Cheng Hong-da and Hsieh “the Ugly” Jia-shien before the home Elephants fought back with a five-run second, the highlight of which was Liu Geng-hsin’s bases-clearing three-run double, that claimed a 5-2 lead.
Brother’s three-run lead lasted less than two innings with the Bulls scoring ten runs over the fourth and fifth on the strength of a three-run double by Lin Yi-chuan and back-to-back solo homers by Hsu Guo-long and Wilton Veras for a seemingly comfortable 12-5 margin.
That was when the Elephants turned their game up a notch as they chipped away at the deficit with a pair of runs in the fifth and three more in the seventh to close to within a deuce, setting the stage for an improbable comeback in a three-run ninth.
Picking up the win for the Elephants was reliever Matt Perisho who entered in the eighth and tossed one and two-thirds scoreless innings of one-hit ball to top Shoda Itsuki who served up the Elephants’ final three runs in a blown save situation.
LIONS 3, BEARS 1
Back-to-back scoring singles by Pan Wu-hsiung and Kao Guo-ching led to a two-run seventh to lift the Uni-President Lions past the La New Bears 3-1 in Kaohsiung on Tuesday, nipping a dreadful seven-game slide for the cats.
Starter Chu Wei-ming took the challenge of facing the top offense in the league head on and equaled to the task by holding the La New bats to a lone run on four hits over seven brilliant innings to earn his sixth win of the year.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Taiwanese badminton superstar Lee Yang broke down in tears after publicly retiring from the sport on Sunday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist held a retirement ceremony at the Taipei Arena after the final matches of the Taipei Open. Accompanied by friends, family and former badminton partners, Lee burst into tears while watching a video celebrating key moments in his professional sporting career that also featured messages from international players such as Malaysia’s Teo Ee Yi, Hong Kong’s Tang Chun-man, and Indonesia’s Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. “I hope that in the future when the world thinks about me, they will
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS