Chen Rei-chang's walk-off double with the go-ahead run on first clinched the game for the Brother Elephants as they overcame a one-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth to top the Chinatrust Whales 4-3 in Sinjhuang on Tuesday evening for their fourth-straight win.
It would have been a tremendous letdown for the Elephants if they had not won the game since the bullpen blew a late-game lead by allowing the Whales to score two runs in the top of the ninth -- turning a one-run lead into a one-run deficit heading into the bottom of the ninth.
Tuesday's contest began with the Elephants striking first in the bottom of the first against Whales starter Lorenzo Barcelo on Chen "The Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan's RBI single.
That would be the only run that either team could score through the sixth, with Barcelo keeping the Elephants hitters at bay for the most part and his counterpart Nicholas Ungs pitching six innings of shutout ball in a two-hit gem. The Whales finally mustered the equalizer in the seventh, with Kuo Dai-yong's run-scoring, two-out single off the American right-hander.
With the score locked at 1-1, the Elephants thought they had the game won in the bottom of the eighth when Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min came through with an RBI double that scored the run all the way from first to make it 2-1 in favor of the Elephants.
But the Whales were not ready to call it quits and countered with a pair of runs off Elephants closer Todd Moser in the top of the ninth on two singles and two walks to set the table for Chen Rei-chang's game-winning hit.
Bears 15, Lions 4
Erupting for 15 runs on 17 hits in a game they could not afford to lose, the La New Bears overpowered the President Lions by a 15-4 margin in Kaohsiung on Tuesday night. They now trail the Lions by half a game in the race for the second-half season title.
With the top-ranked Lions leading the second-place Bears by one-and-a-half games in the standings heading into the match, a win by the visitors would have clinched the second-half title regardless of the outcome of their season finale yesterday.
Instead, the Bears made sure the race for the title would go down to the wire as they humbled their archrivals from Tainan with an all-out offensive that proved too much even for the Lions' Pete Munro, the league's ERA leader this year with a stingy 1.64 mark prior to the game.
Chen Fong-min's three-run blast off Munro capped a six-run third for the home Bears as they broke a scoreless tie before tacking on five more over the next two innings to make it 11-1.
Even though the Lions picked up three straight runs during the sixth and seventh to cut the Bears' lead to seven, it was too little too late as the Bears finished off the night by scoring the game's final four runs.
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
The NHL postponed the Los Angeles Kings’ home game against the Calgary Flames on Wednesday with several massive wildfires burning across the greater Los Angeles area. The Kings and Flames were scheduled to play on Wednesday night at the Kings’ downtown arena. The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers were scheduled to host the Charlotte Hornets in the same arena last night. “Our hearts are with our entire Los Angeles community,” the Kings said in a statement. “We appreciate the hard working first responders who are diligently working to contain the fire and protect our community. We appreciate the league’s support in keeping our
TWO IN A WEEK: Despite an undefeated start to the year playing alongside Jiang Xinyu of China, Wu Fang-hsien is to play the Australian Open with a Russian partner Taiwan’s Wu Fang-hsien yesterday triumphed at the Hobart International, winning the women’s doubles title at the US$275,094 outdoor hard-court tournament, while McCartney Kessler lifted the trophy in the women’s singles. Fourth-ranked Wu and partner Jiang Xinyu of China took 1 hour, 15 minutes to defeat Romania’s Monica Niculescu and Fanny Stollar of Hungary, 6-1, 7-6 (8/6) at the Hobart International Tennis Centre, their second title in a week. Wu and Jiang on Sunday won the women’s doubles title at the ASB Classic in Auckland, beating Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic and Sabrina Santamaria of the US. Their winning ways continued in Australia as they stretched
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