Japan Beats South Korea

The Japanese National Team beat the South Korean National Team 4-3 at the Asian Olympic Qualifier on Sunday in Taiwan to move closer to winning a berth at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

South Korea scored on a home run by Young-Min Ko in the first inning but Japan also hit well and put two runs on the board in the second inning to take a early lead.

Japan scored again in the next innings and held a 3-1 lead until South Korea cut the lead to 3-2 with a run in the fourth inning. Both teams added one run in the eight inning to make the final score 4-3.

Relief pitcher Kenshin Kawakami won the game with two good innings of work for Japan. South Korea starting pitcher Byung-Ho Jun was the loser and lasted just 2.1 innings.

The other game Sunday at the Asian Olympic Qualifier saw the Chinese Tapei National Team shutout the Philippines National Team 9-0. The winning pitcher was Ying-Chieh Lin and the losing pitcher for the Philippines was Ernesto Binarao.

Chin-Feng Chen hit a home run in the first inning to score three runs and Cheng-Min Peng had three hits for Chinese Tapei.

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