Long balls filled the air at Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Sunday night when the La New Bears and the Sinon Bulls combined for six homers as La New claimed a dramatic 8-7 win.
The defending champs opened the game with a grand slam by Chen Chin-fong off Sinon starter Du Yen-jeh in the top of the first and led it 7-3 after three innings before holding off a ferocious Bulls rally late in the game to get the win.
Also going deep for the Bears was sophomore Jiang Chih-tsong, who did it twice off Sinon reliever Lu Ming-chuan to help his club sweep the series with the Bulls.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-TE, TAIPEI TIMES
After Chen Chih-wei's lead-off homer in the bottom of the fourth made it 7-4, the Bears would answer with a run-scoring double by Lin Chih-sheng that turned out to be the difference in the game because their four-run cushion dwindled to one in the bottom of the ninth with the Bulls threatening to win it by loading up the bases with two outs.
That was as close as they got as Bears closer Suzuki Macoto got the Bulls' Tseng Hua-wei to ground out to first to end the game.
Picking up his second straight win as a Bears starter was Huang Jung-chung, who allowed four runs on six hits, including a pair of solo home runs, over five innings to improve his record to 6- innings to improve his record to 6-4.
Suffering the loss was Du, who was pulled in the first after allowing the first three runners he faced to reach before serving up Chen's grand slam for his second loss.
Lions 10, Cobras 1
Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen returned from a two-week break to rest a sore throwing shoulder by tossing six shutout innings to lead the top-ranked President Lions to an impressive 10-1 win over the Macoto Cobras in Tainan on Sunday.
The win was the Lions staff ace's 13th in a row after starting the season 0-2 and it could not have come at a better time as the Lions needed the win to remain a half-game ahead of the Bears.
Five consecutive singles by the Lions off Cobras starter Andy Van Hekken gave the home hosts a 3-0 lead after the first inning before they tacked on another run in the second on Yang Dong-yi's first career homer to make it 4-0.
The Lions would strike for three more runs in the third, highlighted by Chen Lien-hong's two-run single off Van Hekken to blow the game wide open before staking a 10-0 lead heading into the top of the ninth.
On the verge of being shutout for the second time in a week, the Cobras avoided the embarrassment by scoring their lone run of the game on a solo blast by Deng Shih-yang with two outs in the ninth and that was how it ended.
Van Hekken was charged with the loss for allowing the first seven Lions runs before being chased in the top of the third. He remained winless at 0-2 in the three starts that he has made since joining the Cobras in the middle of last month.
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