The La New Bears wrapped up the second-half title for the regular season with a narrow 5-4 win over the Sinon Bulls at home in Kaohsiung on Friday night.
Tied with the idle Uni-President Lions, who finished their regular season on Wednesday night with a big come-from-behind win over the Bulls, the Bears needed a win in their season finale to win the second half outright.
And that was exactly what they did behind the strong pitching of staff ace Mike Johnson, who picked up his 20th win of the year with eight solid innings of work.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
The Canadian native, who finishes the regular season with an astounding 20-2 mark, becomes the first 20-game winner in league history since Mark Kiefer won 20 games for the Sinon Bulls in 2000.
It was not an easy win by any means, since the home Bears actually trailed for a good part of the game before a three-run eighth helped them turn a 2-3 deficit into a 5-3 lead.
Chiang Chih-tsong’s bases-loaded single with one out in the bottom of the eighth jumpstarted an otherwise relatively flat Bears offense as they reclaimed a 4-3 lead before Chen Fong-min added an insurance run with a sacrifice-fly on the ensuing play that made it 5-3.
The Bulls made one final push in the top of the ninth with Chang “Prince of the Forest” Tai-shan homering off Bears closer Jermaine Van Buren, bringing them to within a run.
But that was as close as the Bulls got as Van Buren quickly buckled down and retired the side in order after issuing a walk to preserve the win.
ELEPHANTS 4, WHALES 1
The Brother Elephants took advantage of a wild Chu Wei-ming by scoring a tie-breaking run in the bottom of the sixth as they went on to beat the Chinatrust Whales 4-1 in Sinjhuang on Friday to close out their regular season campaign on a high note.
Kobayashi Ryokan was at his best on the mound for the Elephants with six effective innings of one-run ball to win his 10th of the year.
Doing the damage at the plate for the Elephants were Chen guan-ren and Wang Jin-yong, whose respective triple and single knocked in a run each in the eighth to seal victory for their team.
Next up for the Elephants will be the Bears in the Playoff Series with the best-of-five first-round action scheduled to start in Kaohsiung on Friday night.
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
RSS