Hsieh Ming-tsong’s walk-off single with two outs and runners at the corners scored the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth as the Sinon Bulls rallied for two runs to edge past the Uni-President Lions 8-7 at the Yilan County Baseball Stadium in Luodong on Saturday evening.
The win not only set the hapless Lions further back in the standings with their sixth straight defeat, but also nipped Lin Yueh-ping’s recent streak of consecutive innings without allowing a run at 11-and-one-third as the normally sure-handed closer blew just his third save in 15 chances to lose the heartbreaker.
It was the third one-run loss that the defending champs had suffered in their last five games, leaving many wondering if they could ever regain the winning form that led to back-to-back titles in the last two seasons and a first-place finish in the first half of this season.
The Lions needed a two-run single by Chen Lien-hong to turn a 5-6 deficit into a 7-6 lead in the top of the seventh and thought they had the game wrapped up when Lin took the mound with the narrow lead to start the fatal ninth.
But that would not be the case as the Bulls rose to the occasion one final time in a game that featured four different lead changes to prevail in the end.
BEARS 3, ELEPHANTS 1
Homering for the second time in as many games, Lin Chih-sheng led the La New Bears past the Brother Elephants at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu on Saturday.
Even though the Bears did not score 15 or more runs in the game like they had done in their previous two contests — missing an opportunity to set a new league record for three straight games with 15 or more runs scored — it was a solid win for them nonetheless. The Bears rang up a pair of runs off Elephants starter and former Major Leaguer Tsao Chin-hui in the top of the third to take a 2-0 lead and held on for their sixth win in a row.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
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
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
A debate over the soul of soccer is raging in FIFA World Cup holders Argentina, pitting defenders of the social role of the beautiful game against the government of libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei, who wants to turn clubs into for-profit companies. Argentina, which gave the world Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, is home to some of the world’s most devoted soccer fans — a fact attributed by supporters like Gabriel Nicosia to the clubs’ community outreach. Nicosia is a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo, a more than 100-year-old first division club based in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo where
RSS