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.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
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SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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