The Asian Baseball Championship and qualifying tournament for the 2000 Sydney Olympics is finally over, and the Chinese Taipei team came home with only a bronze medal, to the great dismay of its fans. But the fans at home, despite their disappointment at Chinese Taipei's showing, did not criticize the hard work of the coaches or the players.
Why did the team only place third in the tournament? Why is it that professional leagues in other countries raise the standards of their national baseball teams, while our professional leagues in Taiwan have failed to improve the quality of the Chinese Taipei team?
Why is it that Taiwan -- which like other countries has produced players with enough talent to take on the US major league -- is still incapable of capturing the championship? The heads of Taiwan's two baseball leagues and the commission that oversees them are primarily responsible for this state of affairs.
Taiwan has produced lots of talented players in the past, including Tu Hong-ching (
All of them could be favorably compared to Daisuke Matsuzaka (
In terms of coaches, look at Lin Hua-wei's performance in the Asia Cup. His carefully planned strategy enabled him to tie games with South Korea and Japan, even without a lot of talented players. His performance put looks of consternation on the faces of the coaches of other teams, making them take back arrogant and belittling comments they had made before the tournament began. The solidarity that the coaches for the Taiwan team exhibited was effective.
There is no doubt that fans from Taiwan are the most endearing and passionate in the world.
While baseball league conflicts have distracted fans to some degree, cable TV ratings for the series still shot up to the No. 1 spot. Fans showed their support on the Internet as well. Fans are the greatest asset to the development of Taiwan's professional leagues.
Okay, we've established that Taiwan has great players, coaches and fans. So what's the problem?
The answer: league officials and team owners. Teams regard players as their exclusive property, as long as they perform as expected. But as soon as problems arise, owners dump players, break off all ties with them and even try to smear their reputations.
While it's true that players should assume responsibility for their involvement in betting scandals, the leagues should not completely escape censure. Why should players shoulder all the blame? In some cases, they are slapped with lifetime bans against playing the sport again.
And while it is true that up-and-coming players in Taiwan play for foreign teams because they pay better, teams here can still provide them with an environment in which they can continue to improve their skills
The Asia Cup has become the center of attention for Taiwan's baseball fans, and baseball is the leading candidate for Taiwan's national sport.
If team owners can one day forgo their individual interests and change their narrow-minded thinking, it may be possible to bring together all the top players past and present and form one team.
Baseball leagues could be reorganized, giving each player a chance to play, while retaining the talented players and getting rid of the dead wood.
The gifted athletes that Taiwan produces each year, along with professional coaching staff and enthusiastic fan support, should be enough to really get baseball moving in Taiwan.
It shouldn't be too long before Taiwan's baseball team makes the South Korean and Japanese teams bow with respect and good sportsmanship.
Tai Hsi-chin is a legislative assistant.
You wish every Taiwanese spoke English like I do. I was not born an anglophone, yet I am paid to write and speak in English. It is my working language and my primary idiom in private. I am more than bilingual: I think in English; it is my language now. Can you guess how many native English speakers I had as teachers in my entire life? Zero. I only lived in an English-speaking country, Australia, in my 30s, and it was because I was already fluent that I was able to live and pursue a career. English became my main language during adulthood
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
RSS