Guardians Of The North Tame The Lions

The Fubon Guardians first home game of the year in Xinzhuang

At Xinzhuang Baseball Stadium Tuesday night, the Fubon Guardians set out their stall early on with a one-sided annihilation of the Uni-Lions.

In what was the first home game of the season for the hosts, the Guardians opened with a huge first inning that saw a mix of home runs and RBI’s leave the visitors six behind by the start of the second.

The Guardians’ batters added two more in the second to open up an 8-0 lead with a further two runs at the bottom of the third making it 10. A trio of RBIs in the eighth took the home team’s tally for the night to 13.

Guardians’ starting pitcher Chen Shih-Peng (81) notched up his first home win of the campaign despite a shaky first inning, throwing 105 balls, giving up two runs in the process – one at the top of the third, and another at the top of the sixth; the second a solo homer off Lions’ third baseman, and 10-year veteran Chen Yung-Chi.

Chen was eventually pulled from the mound at the top of the seventh leaving the bullpen to wrap the last two innings against a Lions team that still need to shake off the close-season cobwebs for a final score of Lions 2 – 13 Guardians.

The teams face off again tomorrow at Xinzhuang with the Guardians looking for their fourth win of the season, and the Lions out to salvage at least one win from their two-game road trip before heading back to Tainan for a weekend series against the Monkeys starting Friday.

Mark Buckton

Mark is a journalism vet of 20 years with most of those years spent in Tokyo, Japan, as a columnist for The Japan Times and numerous other publications. His work has appeared on CNN, in the BBC, NPR, and in several dozen other media forms and publications across five continents.