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Uni-President Lions 022 000 000 4 10 0 Canberra Cavalry 200 100 56X 14 20 3
The Canberra Cavalry have written baseball history. The Australian Baseball League champion became the first team from Down Under to win the Asia Series “International Tournament of Champions”, when they routed the Uni-President Lions 14-4 in the championship game on Wednesday at Intercontinental Stadium in Taichung. Jack Murphy of the Toronto Blue Jays was named MVP of the game and the tournament.
While the end result indicates a blowout, the contest was a close game for the first six and a half innings. Canberra delivered the first blow with a two-run single by Murphy in the first, but the Uni-President Lions answered with four runs in the second and third for a 4-2 lead. After the Cavalry cut the deficit to a run in the bottom of the fourth, they added five runs in the seventh and six in the eighth to run away with the victory.
Murphy, who hit a grand slam in the eighth, drove in seven runs overall. Mitch Dening went 5-for-5 with three runs and two RBI. T.C. Kuo scored two of the four Uni-President runs. Michael Ekstrom ended up with the win, pitching 1 2/3 perfect innings of relief. C.S. Kao took the loss.
The Asia Series 2013 was played from November 15 to 20, as a club tournament of the champions from Australian Baseball League, Chinese Professional Baseball League, Korea Baseball Organisation, Nippon Professional Baseball and for the first time in event history the European Champions Cup. Fortitudo Bologna as Europe’s representative and the EDA Rhinos (CPBL had two teams in competition due to their hosting status) were eliminated during the preliminary phase, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles and the Samsung Lions in the semi-finals.
All games were not only broadcasted live in Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but also on CPBL’s YouTube Channel. The championship game on Wednesday was seen online by more than 107,000 people. All games of the tournament are available as video on demand.