Second-half play continued around the league with the Uni-President Lions blanking the Sinon Bulls in a 5-0 final at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night as the Cats remained unbeaten at 2-0 with a pair of shutout wins.
After Friday night’s narrow 1-0 win over the Bulls, in which the Cats used a walk-off single by Pan “TAKE” Wu-hsiung to break a scoreless tie in the bottom of the ninth, it was only fitting for the stingy home hosts to follow their act with another impressive showing, thanks to an outstanding effort by starter Ryan Edell, who tossed shutout ball through the seventh in a three-hitter before turning the game to his bullpen.
The win marked the US lefty’s first in a Lion uniform as he rewarded skipper Terushi Nakashima’s decision to promote him from the minors with a big “W” in his big league debut.
Edell was not alone in the Lions’ convincing trouncing of the Bulls, as they showed off some great leatherwork with Liu Fu-hao and Kao Guo-ching coming up big on several shoestring grabs to rob the Bulls of at least three base hits and a chance to break their scoreless streak, which stands at 22 innings and counting.
The showdown between Edell and his counterpart, Lin Chi-wei, was a defensive struggle as the Lions led it 1-0 through the fifth with the lone run coming in the bottom of the second on an RBI groundout by Yang Song-hsuan.
However, with one clutch swing by Kao on a pitch from Lin that barely cleared the leftfield wall for a three-run home run in the sixth, the score suddenly read 4-0 as the Lions broke it wide open with four runs in the innings to seal off the victory.
Elephants 8, Monkeys 3
The Brother Elephants bounced back from an ugly loss on Friday with an 8-3 win over the Lamigo Monkeys at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to even their weekend series against the Primates at one win apiece.
Chen Chih-hong’s seemingly harmless infield single off Monkey starter Ken Ray sparked what ended up being a seven-run fifth as the men in the golden uniform jumped all over the Monkeys with five straight singles and a triple off three different pitchers in the decisive fifth en route to their first win of the second half.
Jim Magrane improved to an even 6-6 record with the win, while the loss went to Ray, who cruised through the fourth unharmed before suffering his seventh defeat of the year.
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