(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
 Monkeys win Taiwan Series; 4th title in six years!
Nederlands
 TAICHUNG (Taiwan) -
Lamigo Monkeys is the champion of professional baseball in Taiwan.
On Thursday (November 2), the Monkeys won 4-2 against Chinatrust Brothers in Game 4 to win the best-of-seven Taiwan Series, 4-1.
It is the fourth title for the team in the last six years and its fifth in team-history.
The team also was the champion in 2012, 2014 and 2015 after having won its first title in 2006.
That ended the 28th season of the Chinese Professional Baseball League.
In 1997-2003, there was another professional league, the Taiwan Major League, which merged with the CPBL in 2003.
Lamigo Monkeys began the Series with an one-win advantage for winning both the first and second half of the regular season.
Brothers won 8-5 in the opener on Saturday, despite missing five veteran players.
They were suspended for alleged misconduct off the field.
The Monkeys then won big in the next two games, 14-5 and 19-3, to take a 3-1 lead.
At Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, the Monkeys scored early in the second inning.
Brothers answered with a run, but the visitors enlarged their lead in the sixth.
I-cheng Wang, starter for the Monkeys, had a strong outing.
In six innings, he gave up only three basehits and struckout six hitters.
One of the hits, he allowed was a homerun by Chih-hao Chang, who later homered again.
The Monkeys opened the score with two runs in the second inning off of starter Bryan Woodall.
Hung-yu Lin led off with a homerun, two singles followed, then a sacrifice fly by Cheng-fei Lin made it a 2-0 score.
...Chih-hao Chang homered twice for Brothers...
...On the photo, he hits for Taiwan during...
...the 2017 World Baseball Classic in March...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
Woodall recovered and Brothers the cut the deficit in half when Chih-hao Chang hit his first homerun in the bottom of the second inning.
Woodall played professionally in the organization of the Arizona Diamondbacks since 2008.
The righthanded American reached Triple-A in 2012 and 2013.
Woodall played in an Independent League in 2015 and 2016, before making his debut in Taiwan.
But Woodall ran into problems in the sixth inning when he walked the first two hitters.
That was followed by a runscoring single from Chun-hsiu Chen and a double by Cheng-fei Lin, which lifted the lead to 4-1.
The 20-year old Lin set a record with ten runs batted in.
Chen was 3-for-3 in this game after hitting 4-for-4 in the third game.
The first baseman batted .714 in the Series, scored eight runs, batted in four and was named Most Valuable Player of the Series.
Chen played in the organization of the Cleveland Indians in 2008-2013, playing in Triple-A in 2013.
Woodall also was relieved after six innings.
He also gave up six hits and struckout seven batters.
Brothers scored its second run in the seventh inning off of reliever Chun-hsiang Chu when Chang hit his second homerun in the game.
The team was then held scoreless by in the eighth by Yueh-lin Wang and in the ninth by closer Yu-hsun Chen.
After the Monkeys captured the Champonship-title, La New Corporation, the footwear manufacturing company that owns the team since 2004, gave several discounts in all its shop in the country for a specific period.
The company purchased the team in 2004 and it then was named La New Bears, playing in Kaohsiung.
The team moved after the 2010 season to Taoyuan and was renamed Lamigo Monkeys.
(November 2)
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