The red-hot bats of the Brother Elephants that have come on strong lately are the main reason that the Elephants have quietly slipped past the fourth-placed President Lions and taken over the third-place spot in the league standings.
Led by the ever-consistent all-star center fielder Chen Chih-yuan (
"This [the Elephants] is definitely a different ball club from the one I saw in March and April," well-known local baseball commentator Jack Chen said. "This is more like the defending champions that I'm used to seeing."
The last time the Elephants lost a series was in mid-April.
Round Up
The First Securities Agan were no match against the high-flying Elephants in the makeup game in Hsinchuang on Tuesday night.
Elephant base runners were busy all game with a season-high eight steals, only one shy of tying the league record set by the former China Times Eagles in 1996.
Agan starter Greg Bicknell of Fresno, California failed to keep 3-0 lead after 1-1/2 innings of play as he allowed four runs in the bottom of the second en route to a 5-9 loss, his eighth of the season.
Still winless for the season, the former Luka of the TML was released by the Agan after the game for a poor showing in his second visit to Taiwan.
Bicknell is 0-8 with an ERA of 5.05 in 13 appearances, mostly in the starting role.
Also in action were the Bulls against the Gida in Hsinchu and Hsinchuang on Tuesday and Wednesday. Having clinched the title for the first half of the season, Bull manager Chen Wei-chen (
Game 1 of the four-game series featured the two newcomers on the Gida team: starter Peter Moylan and third baseman Osmani Estrada.
The "foreign help" immediately paid dividends as Moylan held the Bulls to two runs on eight hits over seven innings of play for his first win of the season while Estrada went 2-for-5 with a homer and three RBI's in the 4-2 Gida victory.
Game 2 of the series began with the Bulls jumping to an early 6-0 lead after only two innings of play.
Bulls ace Jeff Andra went 5-1/3 innings, allowing three runs on seven hits.
Leading by a score of 6-3 in the seventh, Bulls relievers Kuo Yun-chih (
Upcoming Games
The Bulls will finish the series against the Gida in Taichung on Friday and Saturday before the first half of the season comes to an end.
Caught between resting as many as his regular starters as possible and winning the last homestand of the season, manager Chen Wei-chen will have some tough decisions to make against a feisty Gida team.
The Elephants host the Whales in Hsinchuang, with one game yesterday and one today, and then a game in Tienmu on Sunday.
Trailing the second-placed Whales by 2-1/2 games, a sweep by the Elephants could move them into second place.
The Lions will travel to Kaohsing for a three-game series against the Agan. Game 1 was yesterday, and games 2 and 3 will be tomorrow and Sunday.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS