Chen Jien-wei's two-out single to shallow-right with runner on second drove in the game-winner in the top of the 12th inning to lift the Chinatrust Whales past the President Lions in a 9-8 final in Tainan on Saturday evening.
After 11 innings of play that lasted nearly five hours, the veteran Whales slugger came up with the hit needed to put his team ahead.
The Whales bullpen then with reliever Kevin Tolar retiring the side in order in the bottom of the 12th for his first victory of the season.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
Tilson Brito's two-run shot off Whales starter Nee Fu-deh, quickly gave the home Lions a 2-0 advantage in the bottom of the first.
But the lead would last less than an inning as the marine creatures evened things up in the top of the second with two runs before tallying four more in the third on a couple of run-scoring errors by the Lions defense and Kuo Dai-yong's two-run single up the middle to make it 6-2.
Two more Whales runs in the fifth on sacrifice-flies by Kuo and Cheng Chang-ming off Lions starter Wayne Franklin gave them a seemingly comfortable 8-2 lead.
But that was when the Lions put on their rally caps and plated six unanswered runs over the next three innings to force an 8-all tie by the end of the seventh.
Three straight singles followed by Shih Jin-dien's pinch-hit double capped a three-run rally in the seventh to humble a somewhat overconfident Whales pitching crew.
Thanks to Chen's extra-innings magic, the Whales avoided what would have been an embarrassing loss after their bullpen wasted a six-run lead to send the contest into extra innings.
Picking up the loss for the Lions was Tsao Jung-yang, who survived a bases-loaded jam in the 11th with a huge strikeout and an inning-ending pick-off play at second. However, he finally ran out of luck in the 12th against Chen.
Bulls 5, Cobras 4
Four extra-base hits in a row, highlighted by Hsu Guo-long's two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh, rallied the Sinon Bulls from a 0-4 deficit to top the Macoto Cobras by a 5-4 margin in Taichung on Saturday night.
Yu Hsien-ming's RBI-double off Cobras starter Jeremy Hill with two outs in the bottom of the seventh got the Bulls on the board before Cheng Jau-han and Wu Bo-hong ripped two more run-scoring hits off Hill to chase the Cobras right-hander in a 4-3 affair.
In came Cobras reliever Chang Hsien-chih, who served up Hsu's homer with a man on second to complete the five-run seventh.
Hsieh "the Ugly" Jia-shien's run-scoring double in the opening frame put the serpents ahead 1-0 before they pushed two more runs across in the fifth on Wang Chuan-jia's bases-loaded walk and a sacrifice fly by the Ugly.
Yu Wen-pin's wild pitch with the bags juiced in the sixth spotted the Cobras their fourth run of the game and a 4-0 lead, setting the table for the Bulls' game-turning, five-run seventh.
Yu Wen-pin was credited with the win to improve to 2-2 for the year despite throwing two wild pitches in relief, beating his counterpart Chang, who fell to a 5-4 mark with the loss.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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