Japan's 2-0 victory over South Korea in the final game of the 2003 Asian Baseball Championship gave the host country the unshared title in this year's competition and Taiwan the second-place finish that it desperately sought for the right to represent Asia in the upcoming Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
A loss by the Japanese would have sent South Korea in place of Taiwan because Taiwan, with the same 2-1 record as South Korea, would have lost the tiebreaker, having yielded more runs than South Korea.
PHOTO: AP/KYODO NEWS
To get the second win in this year's four-team, three-game round-robin tournament, in Sapporo Japan, Taiwan barely slipped by China with a 3-1 victory earlier in the day, thanks to slugger Chen Chin-feng's (
Chen's hot bat continued to make opposing pitchers shiver as Chen went 3-for-4 for the second game in a row to help Taiwan bounce back from Thursday night's embarrassing 9-0 defeat by Japan.
Chen was one single shy of batting for the cycle as he ripped an offering from Chinese starter Wang Nan (
The 26-year-old Tainan native accounted for all of Taiwan's three runs as he knocked home two and scored the third from third base on Wang Nan's wild pitch in the bottom of the fourth. From the mound, Taiwan's starter Chang Chih-chia (
Chang took a shutout into the ninth before allowing a run on Chinese centerfielder Chang Hung-po's (
The game began with Taiwan taking a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second on designated hitter Chen Chin-feng's solo shot to dead center, before the score read 2-0 in the fourth on a wild pitch that scored Chen again from third.
Taiwan put runners in scoring positions in the next three innings, but failed to cash in.
Outside the heavyweights in the order, who produced six of Taiwan's eight runs, the rest of the lineup was a meagerly 2-for-24 against Chinese pitching that yielded six runs to Japan and 13 to South Korea.
With China managing to stay within striking distance, Chen Chin-feng made sure his team would not be denied the victory by driving a pitch down the right-field line for a triple that scored fellow teammate Chang Tai-shan (張泰山) all the way from first for Taiwan's third and deciding run.
Despite the win, Taiwan's manager Hsu Sheng-ming (徐生明) expressed concern regarding his team's inability to put the game away earlier against a much weaker Chinese side. Hsu said he "would critically review the lack of offense overall as soon as the team returns home from Japan," according to Chinese-language media.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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