Luther Hackman tossed eight strong innings of two-run ball, while Kuo Dai-chi and Marshall McDougall each drove in a pair of runs as the Uni-President Lions humbled the Sinon Bulls 6-2 at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to win the weekend series 2-1.
It was the third straight quality start for the US veteran, who remained unbeaten at 3-0 in the three starts he has had so far after spending more than a month on the sidelines at the start of the season with an injury.
As for McDougall, the pair of RBIs also upped his team-best total to 25 for the season, good enough for third-best in the league.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The visiting Cats actually fell behind 0-1 in the third inning when the Bulls scored their first run of the contest on a fielding error by Lions shortstop Wang Tzu-song.
After five scoreless innings, the Lions would finally wake up and pull off three runs in the sixth, courtesy of an RBI single by Kuo and a two-run double by McDougall.
Three more runs by the Lion offense in the seventh quickly upped their lead to an insurmountable 6-1.
Even though the home Bulls would plate a run in the eighth off Hackman, that was as close as they got as Jerome Williams retired the final three Sinon batters with a perfect ninth to preserve the win.
Bulls starter Eric Junge cruised through to the fifth inning unharmed with a one-hitter, but stumbled in the sixth with three allowed runs on four hits to lose his second game of the season.
ELEPHANTS 7, BEARS 4
The Brother Elephants scored three unanswered runs in the seventh and eighth innings to break a 4-4 deadlock and then held on to beat the La New Bears 7-4 at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu last night.
The win not only ended a two-game slide for the men in the golden uniform, but also avoided what would have been a three-game sweep at the hands of the Bears.
After Chen Chih-pong’s two-run single capped a three-run sixth that gave the Elephants a 4-1 lead, the Bears returned the favor by scoring three in the very next inning to tie the game at 4-4.
That was when the Elephants’ bats came alive once more as they mustered the next three runs to win it 7-4.
Carlos Castillo was credited with the win, while the loss went to the Bears’ Luis Villarreal.
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
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
RSS