Close plays dominated CPBL action on Sunday with the Brother Elephants edging past the Sinon Bulls by a 2-1 margin at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu and the Uni-President Lions downing the La New Bears 3-2 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium.
Liao Yu-cheng of the Elephants outpitched his Sinon counterpart Lin Keh-chien in a battle between two nine-game winners by tossing one-run ball over eight solid innings of work to become the league’s first local ten-game winner.
“It’s one of those games that no one deserves to lose,” Liao said after the game.
Lin, who also lasted through the eighth in a quality start, allowed a pair of early runs in the third, which turned out to be the difference in the game. It took the Elephants three straight singles, all with two outs in the top of the third, to score two runs off the Sinon rookie sensation.
Huang Cheng-wei led off the inning with a single and made it to second two outs later before scoring on Chou Si-chi’s liner off Lin to right to put the Elephants 1-0 up.
After Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min followed with another single to put the runners at the corners, Chen Guan-ren came through with a clutch single that gave his team a 2-0 advantage.
Liao, who took a 2-0 shutout one out into the sixth before giving up an RBI single to Sinon’s Lin Yi-chuan, had one of his best games of the season, improving to 10-5 for the year with a team-best 3.37 ERA.
LIONS 3, BEARS 2
Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen earned his 10th win of the season by throwing one-run ball over seven strong innings to lift the Uni-President Lions past the La New Bears 3-2.
The win gave Du Du double-digit wins for a record-setting seven straight seasons, breaking the old mark of six set by former Bulls great Osvaldo Martinez (2000-2005).
He also became the eighth man to reach the 700-strikeout plateau in league history when he fanned seven to give him 705 in six-plus seasons.
The Lions capitalized on a wild Jose Silva by drawing an unusual five walks off the La New starter to score two runs without even getting a hit off the former major leaguer.
They tacked on a third run in the seventh on Pan Wu-hsiung’s two-out single to make it 3-1, which proved crucial as the Bears rallied for a run in the ninth before falling short to lose this one by a run.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to