Hsu Wen-hsiung pitched six solid innings of one-run ball and Shih Chih-wei drove in a pair of runs on a 3-for-4 night to lead the La New Bears past the Sinon Bulls 8-1 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Wednesday night.
It was a big win for Hsu not only because it improved his season mark to a respectable 3-1, but also because it was his 20th career victory which began in 2003 with the merger of the two leagues (the Chinese Professional Baseball League and the Taiwan Major League).
“It’s a big win for me because I have struggled on and off over the years for one reason or another,” Hsu said after the game as he was also voted the game-MVP.
Doing the damage at the plate was Shih who picked up his fifth three-hit game of the year while improving his average to .314.
Two quick runs in the bottom of the first from back-to-back sacrifice-flies by Chen Chin-fong and Gary Burnham spotted the home Bears to a 2-0 lead before they added three more runs an inning later on an RBI-double by Huang “Easy” Long-yi and a two-run single by Shih to go up 5-0.
Sinon starter Yu Wen-pin was greeted harshly by the Bears hitters in his shortest start of the season as he was relieved by Tsai Ming-jin in the second after being charged with all of the five early runs for the Bears.
Even though Tsai would pitch the next three-and-two-thirds innings without surrendering any runs to keep his club in the game, his offense was unable to solve Hsu with five futile innings against the Bears starter until it finally came through in the sixth with a lone run off Hsu after leading off the inning with a double and a single to place runners at the corners with no outs.
That was as close as the Bulls got as Hsu pitched out of the jam with minimal deanage en route to the convincing win.
Suffering the loss for the Bulls was Yu who had been 3-0 heading into the game with a outstanding ERA of 2.1 before serving up five runs on as many hits in a losing effort.
Whales 2 Lions 4
Top-ranked President Lions doubled up on the Chinatrust Whales in a 4-2 decision in Tainan on Tuesday to kick off the week of play with a bang.
Accounting for all four of his team’s runs, red-hot slugger Kao Guo-ching continued his dominance over the opposing pitchers by belting a two-run homer that brought his team back from two down in the seventh and a two-run single in the eighth to win it.
Kao’s outstanding play at the plate kept Lions starter Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen’s record-setting, 20-game winning streak alive as the Lions staff ace avoided what would have been a loss as he left the game in after the sixth trialing the Whales 0-2.
Du Du would end up with a no-decision on the night as the late-game surge by the Lions offense made a winner out of reliever Chang Chih-chiang for his two innings of scoreless relief in the seventh and eighth.
Tagged with the tough loss was Chang’s counterpart Liu Yu-chan who loaded up the bases in the eighth after getting two quick outs before giving up the game-deciding double to Kao.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
RSS