More than 14,000 fans flocked to the Greater Kaohsiung Baseball Stadium yesterday afternoon to witness the Brother Elephants’ 10-4 trouncing of the Sinon Bulls in the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s season opener.
The win made it five in a row for the men in the golden uniforms against their archrivals from Taichung, dating back to their four-game sweep in the Taiwan Series last October.
REMATCH
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
The highly anticipated rematch of last year’s Taiwan Series was anything but close, as the Elephants opened with a quick three-run lead in the bottom of the first courtesy of four hits and a throwing error by Sinon starter Yang Jien-fu.
The Elephants would add to their lead in the third and the fourth with a pair of runs each that blew the game wide open at 7-0, highlighted by Chen Guan-ren’s two-run double off Sinon reliever Chen Huan-yang.
Trailing by seven, the Bulls would finally get on the board in the fifth with four big runs on the strength of Cheng Da-hong’s RBI single and Chen Chih-wei’s pinch-hit three-run homer that chased Elephants starter Tseng Song-wei.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
ROMAN ARRIVES
That was as close as the Bulls got as the Elephants sent Orlando Roman to the mound to put out the fire and rode the pitching arm of the American righty all the way to victory over the four shutout innings that followed en route to a convincing win.
Roman was credited with the first win of the season, allowing no runs on three hits and a pair of walks over 4-1/3 innings of work.
Taking the loss was the Bulls’ Yang, whose record-setting fourth season-opening start was tarnished by a disappointing outing that saw the veteran right-hander surrender five runs on seven hits in 2-1/3 innings of play.
The two teams will travel to Pingtung this afternoon for a 2:05pm start, while the Lamigo Monkeys (formerly the La New Bears) take on the Uni-President Lions at the Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taichung at the same time.
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