Lefty Ni Fu-Te put on a clinic of left-handed relief work Wednesday night in Beijing, picking up the win by tossing 5 strong shutout innings with six K’s. Outfielder Lin Che-Hsuan broke out of his slump, going 3-for-5 with 2 RBI and a HR as Taiwan took advantage of the glorious Olympic extra inning rule, quickly ending a match of two teams playing for pride.
Taiwan went up 5-2 early on two home runs by two players whose names non-Chinese speakers will require hours to differentiate: Lin Che-Hsuan (the fast one in the Oakleys that plays for Boston) and Lin Chi-Shen (the Robocop-esque out of position SS that charged the ump earlier). But Canada clawed its way back into the game, tying it on a Stubby Clapp home run in the seventh of of Tong-Yi Lions’ Pan Hui-Lun.
The game would remain tied but Taiwan kept Canada’s lefty-filled lineup at bay with Ni Fu-Te’s excellent effort. Ni worked the black and painted the outside corners, freezing Canada’s hitters and showing impeccable location.
Chiang Chih-Hsien’s go-ahead single in the top of the 12th with two free baserunners on would turn out to be the game winner.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Simon Currie // Aug 21, 2008 at 4:09 am
Yeah, Japan’s lefty Naruse also put on a clinic against the super lefty heavy and free swinging Canadian lineup by using excellent control to spot pitches in and out of the zone.
I wonder what the reason is for Canada’s extreme lefty lineup (about 70% of Canadian hockey players shoot left, mirror image of the US, and Canada has the highest percentage of lefty golfers, something like 19%, all due to early contact with hockey apparently), this was also true with the WBC lineup.
2 hansioux // Aug 21, 2008 at 8:27 am
I knew I loved Canada for a reason… finally a place where lefty rules the world.
3 hansioux // Aug 21, 2008 at 10:47 am
a side note, at the bottom of the 12th inning, Canada decided to protest against a necklace that Chang Chi-Jia was wearing when he came up as the CP.
Chang then tucked the thin band necklace into his skin tight turtle neck undershirt. At that point the necklace is completely invisible. However, the Canadian manager came up again to insist the removal of the necklace.
Which is incredibly funny in re-watching, because the previous pitcher also had a shiny necklace and he pitched for 5 innings.
Chang then struck out the only batter he faced to end the game. And told the batter to go to hell for making him remove the necklace with his wedding band on it.
4 IronChef // Aug 21, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I’ll be honest: i wanted the fuckers to lose. Hong doens’t deserve money.
5 jackson // Aug 21, 2008 at 10:41 pm
I root for Taiwan and I can’t say that I want to see them lose. But what enrages me is the fact that after all is said and done each player on the team is going to take home a 50,000 US bonus simply for showing up.
This seems emblematic of the whole situation with baseball in Taiwan right now. If you have an incentive clause, it should be that the players are rewarded for bringing home a medal, not showing up and embarrassing themselves. With things like this its kind of easy to see why the program doesn’t move forward.
6 bigdaub // Aug 22, 2008 at 12:29 am
baseball in taiwan is run by bunch of old farts and they have their way of doing things. they’ll also protect themselves, the ones that are in that inner baseball circle.
it’ll be hard to get any real changes going, but those old farts are definitely on the hot seat and hopefully they realize that they can’t hold on forever without making any changes.
Leave a Comment