Kobayashi Ryokan pitched his best game since joining the Brother Elephants at the start of this season by going the distance in an impressive 6-0 shutout win over the Sinon Bulls at Douliou on Friday to record his first win in Taiwan.
The longtime minor league prospect of Japan’s Chunichi Dragons and the Lotte Marines who signed with the Elephant during the offseason for chance to star in Taiwan finally delivered what the Elephants had been looking for from him in a two-hit gem to silence his critics. He also gave an overworked Brother bullpen some much needed rest as they played their fourth game in five days.
A 6-0 lead was more than ample for Kobayashi as he shut down the Bulls offense by tossing a no-hit ball from the fifth inning on to pick up the impressive win.
Lions 13, T-Rex 4
Scoring early and often, the President Lions mowed over the dmedia T-Rex by racking up eleven runs over the first four innings en route to a 13-4 win in Tainan on Friday night.
The home cats wasted little time getting to T-Rex starter Michael Christopher with a first-inning run off the US right-hander before piling on the runs over the next three innings with two in the second, five in the third and three more in the fourth to blow the game wide open.
Lions outfielder Kuo Dai-chi ended his career-night by going 3-for-4 with four RBIs to lead a tenacious attack that ripped 13 hits off four different dmedia pitchers.
Last season’s Rookie-of-the-Year winner Pan Wu-hsiung of the Lions also exploded for three hits on the night with a pair of RBIs to come out of a recent slump that had kept his average to a .268.
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
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