The Uni-President Lions on Saturday gave star outfielder Liu Fu-hao an exuberant send-off, retiring his No. 56 playing shirt after Liu played his final game for the Lions, a 5-4 victory at home over the Brothers Baseball Club.
Nicknamed “Little Pot” due to his apparent resemblance to a cartoon character, Liu is regarded as one of the most fearsome hitters in Taiwanese baseball.
He played a role in five CPBL titles for the Lions in a glittering career spanning 15 seasons.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
Liu hit his 100th home run against the EDA Rhinos on April 25, 2016, going into the record books as the sixth CPBL player to reach 1,000 hits, 100 home runs and 100 stolen bases.
Liu is also known for his “web gems” as he patrols centerfield. He won the Golden Glove award for outfielders six times in a row from 2006 to 2011.
Although he did not get a hit on Saturday, the 39 year old All Star had 1,084 in 1,231 appearances, accumulating 109 homers, 193 doubles, 25 triples, 560 RBIs, 126 steals and a batting average of 0.276.
In Tainan on Saturday, the home side trailed 2-4 after seven frames in Liu’s last outing, but designated hitter Pan Wu-hsiung came to the rescue, blasting a three-run homer in the bottom of eighth to edge the Brothers.
After the game, Liu donned a vest and tie and, alongside three teammates, sang and drummed in a mini-concert, treating the crowd of more than 7,100 to a taste of his hobby —jazz music — as he bid an emotional farewell.
“I have plenty of good memories playing with this team and the excitement in my heart today was just as stirring as my first at-bat,” Liu said.
“Retiring from baseball leaves me with some regret, because it seems to have come so quickly,” he said.
With his contract ending this year, the Lions placed him with a farm team and Liu said he plans to stay committed to training and playing every day.
“I plan to go abroad to baseball camps and learn coaching, so I will not take a coaching job with the Lions next year, but it could be among my options in the long run,” he said.
Liu’s rookie year was 2004 and made an immediate impact. In his first at-bat, he tagged Chinatrust Whales starting pitcher Dario Veras for a solo home run, the first Taiwanese to hit a homer in his first at-bat in the CPBL, although some overseas players had done so.
Under the guidance of head coach Lu Wen-sheng, Liu formed part of a core line-up of sluggers, establishing a dynasty as they captured three straight trophies in 2007 — when Liu was named the best player of the Taiwan Series — 2008 and 2009.
They won two more titles in the following four years.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
RSS