More than 10,000 screaming fans are expected to flock to the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu this afternoon as the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) opens its 23rd season with a showdown between the Uni-President Lions and the Brother Elephants at 5:05 pm.
The highly anticipated rematch of the 2009 Taiwan Series that saw the Lions rally from a 2-3 deficit to blow past the Elephants with back-to-back victories in Game 6 and Game 7 will feature a pair of fresh starting arms as the Lions send newcomer Jon Leicester to the mound to take on local rookie sensation Lin Yu-ching of the Elephants.
“It’s a dream come true for me to be able to start off the season for my favorite team,” Lin said during the opening day press conference at the Brother Hotel in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
Photo: CNA
Lin has been an Elephant fan all his life and will try to give his club a leg up on the rest of the league with a good start this afternoon.
“You’d think that we would go with a more experienced player to start the season, but [Lin] is really our best starter at this moment, with the foreigner [Leicester] still trying to adjust to our system,” Elephants manager Chen Rei-chen said about his decision to start a rookie.
Leading the offense for the Elephants will be team icon Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min, who hopes to celebrate his multiyear contract that includes a guaranteed NT$500,000 a month with a promising season at the plate.
The Big Cats, who went through an eventful offseason with veteran manager Lu Wen-sheng abruptly stepping down after he admitted to tipping off sports gamblers prior to games, will look to put their woes behind them.
Replacing Lu on an interim basis will be Terushi Nakashima of Japan, who could not wait for the season to begin in order to put the off-field distractions behind him.
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