Taiwan won their third game in as many days at the Intercontinental Cup Baseball Championship last night, shutting out Hong Kong 10-0 in seven innings in Taichung to improve to 3-0 in Group A.
Starter Lin Chen-hua struck out nine while walking none over seven innings in a two-hit gem, despite a lack of run support in the early innings, to pick up the complete-game win. He would have gone two more innings to get the full shutout the old-fashioned way as his pitch-count only ran up to 77 after the seventh, were it not for the mercy rule that called the game after Taiwan took a 10-run lead.
“I am glad I was able to go out and keep the opposing hitters from scoring because our hitters had some trouble earlier,” Lin said after the game.
His offense only managed to plate two runs on five hits through four against Hong Kong starter Leung Yu Chung before piling on eight runs on a dozen more hits from the fifth on.
Doing the damage at the plate for the hosts were Lin Chih-sheng and Chen Chun-hsiu, whose three hits apiece with five RBIs on the night accounted for half of Taiwan’s total offense. All, but one of the six combined hits by Lin and Chen went for extra bases, with Lin clearing two triples off Leung.
“It [hitting two triples] really eased some frustration,” Lin Chih-sheng said after the game.
He had gone hitless and hit into a double play the day before in Taiwan’s win over the Czech Republic in a sub-par performance.
Taiwan took a 1-0 lead in the second when Chen led off the inning with a double and scored two batters later on Kao Guo-ching’s RBI groundout.
After Chen’s run-scoring double made it 2-0 in the third and a scoreless fourth, the Taiwanese bats came alive, rolling off three straight extra-base hits to double the lead before erupting for six more runs over the sixth and seventh innings to earn the win.
“We’ll definitely try to correct our slow starts because it will really hurt us against a top team,” Taiwan’s skipper Yeh Chih-hsien said.
His team take on defending champs Cuba in Douliou at 6:30pm this evening.
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
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
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