Lions Win CPBL Series
The Uni President Lions prevailed for the second year in a row over the Brother Elephants, defeating them four games to three. You can see the history of the CPBL here: http://www.myworldofbaseball.com/id19.html. This is the third straight series victory for the Lions and their seventh in CPBL history. The Brother Elephants are number two with six championships. Next year will be key because no team in the history of the CPBL has won four series in a row.
The Elephants battled hard, coming back from a three games to one deficit by winning two 5-4 extra inning games that lasted a total of 27 innings. You can read about the game here: http://www.ibaf.org/index.php?id=10&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=433&tx_ttnews[backPid]=9&cHash=5d682c4e50
Two ex-Rockies dueled it out for the championship, Luther Hackman for the Lions and Tsao Chin-Hui for the Elephants. In the 2008 series Luther Hackman had pitched a game seven 4-0 shut out over the Elephants. He had already started and won two of the three games the Lions had won. They were hoping to get one more from him.
The Lions jumped out to a 3-0 lead off Tsao, scoring two in the second and one in the third. Luther Hackman was able to hold the Elephant bats quiet until the fifth, when they plated two runs to narrow the deficit to 3-2. Hackman left after the sixth inning with the team up 3-2. Lin Yue-Ping pitched the seventh, Nerio Rodriguez the eighth and Pan Wei-Lun closed out the ninth to pick up the save. For Luther Hackman it was his fifth championship series victory, the most by and pitcher in CPBL history.
While game seven did not go into extra innings it did have three ejections, two Lions and one Elephant, and a player’s protest by the Elephants against their one ejection by refusing to have a player come to bat. Objects were thrown on the field and the fans were filled with emotion. After the previous night’s 6 hour 17 inning game they wereletting their feelings known. They had invested a lot in the series. You can read about these events at the previous link.
One interesting thing to note is that for Lion’s U.S. pitcher Kenny Rayburn it was his fourth consecutive championship. In 2006 he played for the LaNew Bears when they won the CPBL, then went to play for Korea where for two years the SK Wyverns won the championship and back to Taiwan to lead the Lions to a championship.