Baseball fans are heading back to the diamond this year -- some for the first time, others with fond memories of the good old days.
With 300 plus games in store for the new season, two new teams and a unified governing body for the sport, baseball looks to be in good shape.
The merger of the Taiwan Major League and Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) should bring back some of the luster that was lost after the betting scandals of 1996 and the following years of rivalry between the two leagues.
As a mark of the importance which the "national game" is said to hold for the country, the president and over 300 officials will turn up for the first game tomorrow, between the CPBL champion Brother Elephants and what will be its new rival Taipei team, Naluwan Gida.
It should be a fitting start to the season and a new era for local professional baseball.
The CPBL was formed in 1989 and was an immediate success for a baseball-loving public that was used to Little League successes and a good international reputation.
In the early to mid-1990s star player salaries kept on rising as average gates climbed and the big games attracted more than 100,000 fans.
But greed got in the way.
Betting on games was rampant and became so bad that organized crime got involved. Stories of players being pistol whipped and kidnapped for losing a game on which a lot of money was lost made the rounds.
Soon, investigators revealed that there was widespread corruption, from gangsters to pressure tactics in the locker room.
It all ended badly, with the Chinatimes Eagles being ejected from the league when its players were found to have thrown games.
Two of the founding franchises of the CPBL, the Weichuan Dragons and Mercury Tigers then folded for financial reasons, as fans realized the games were not real contests and stopped going to the ballpark.
A rival league was begun in 1996 by Sampo Inc, which lost out on TV rights and for the last six years there has been a battle between the two leagues which put off the punters and caused a further slump in the fortunes of professional baseball.
It was in the interest of everyone to merge the two leagues and when they did so at the end of last year there was relief all round, from government officials to the ordinary fan.
Now, professional baseball in Taiwan has been given another chance to relive its glory days again.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Marcus Rashford’s first goals for Aston Villa on Sunday inspired a 3-0 win against Preston North End that sent his side into the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time in 10 years. Rashford struck twice in the second half at Deepdale to end Preston’s stubborn resistance before Jacob Ramsey wrapped up Villa’s long-awaited return to the last four. Villa are to face Crystal Palace — 3-0 winners at Fulham on Saturday — in the semi-finals at Wembley Stadium in London. Revitalized since joining Villa on loan from Manchester United during the January transfer window, Rashford is beginning to show the form that
RSS