The indictment of 24 suspects on Wednesday in the latest match-fixing scandal to hit Taiwanese baseball raises new and serious questions about the future of the domestic professional game.
Had the indictment pointed to a one-off incident, then appropriate adjustments could have been made and things could have carried on as usual.
But this was the fifth time that players from the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) have been investigated for throwing games in the last 20 years — a sorry record that would lead even the most passionate baseball fan to conclude that the CPBL has no future.
The reasons for Taiwan’s embarrassing inability to stage a well-run, corruption-free league for what is, after all, the nation’s most popular sport are hard to fathom, but they need to be solved and solved quickly if the CPBL is to regain even a modicum of credibility.
The most obvious reason that players would be enticed to throw games in return for a fast buck is the small salary package earned by most of the game’s lower-ranked players.
The fact that the majority of baseball players are young and not particularly well educated men from rural areas may or may not contribute to the inability to say no to fast cars and hostesses on offer by gambling rings. But this source of the game’s talent pool cannot easily be changed, nor necessarily should it be changed.
The problem now, however, is that better-paid players have been accused of cheating.
Suggestions that law enforcement officials be stationed at clubs to keep an eye on players and staff are an overreaction and a waste of government resources, while banning gambling on the CPBL would have little effect, as most of the betting on games takes place underground.
Cracking down on gangs and corrupt politicians that run match-fixing scams would seem to be the obvious solution, but doing this would require an unprecedented change to the police force’s tacit tolerance of organized crime.
One thing is certain: The tens of thousands of dedicated fans deserve much better than the CPBL offers, but with the current roster of teams now in spring training, a new season about to begin and no convincing plan to combat match-fixing in place, it seems unlikely that they will get the clean, well-organized league that their loyalty warrants.
For the time being, it looks as if the professional game will struggle on in its current form, but a failure to propose solutions more meaningful than cutting taxes on player salaries and pensions will mean that it will only be a matter of time before the next scandal occurs — surely something that would spell the end for the competition.
If that occurs, then the best solution may be to give up on the professional game for a period and revitalize the sport at its amateur roots.
This would attract players who love the game and not just the promise of celebrity and perks, while fans would be able to support their teams without having to worry whether each dropped catch or misfield is the result of slack training or something more sinister.
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