CPBL officials announced the resumption of the Asia Series yesterday afternoon in a statement that should bring joy to baseball fans across Asia.
With Japan’s professional baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), confirming its participation earlier this week in the upcoming 2011 Asia Series in Taiwan, the stage is finally set for the best of Asia to showcase their talent in a high-caliber international tournament.
The annual four-day competition of Asia’s top professional baseball teams, which was known as the Konami Cup and ran for four seasons from 2005 to 2008 prior to a two-year stoppage, will resume in Taiwan in November with Australia sending the defending champs of the Australian Baseball League (ABL), the Perth Heat, to replace the champs from China’s Chinese Baseball League (CBL) in a four-team face off.
With Japan recovering from the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the NPB was forced to postpone its season this year by nearly a month, which also meant delaying its Championship Series (Nippon Series) to mid-November, so the country had been unable to commit to participating in the Asia Series tentatively set for Nov. 11 to Nov. 14.
However, with all involved parties acknowledging the unusual situation in Japan and the country’s desire to take part in the event, the Asia Series is now set for Nov. 25 to Nov. 29, with the champs from South Korea’s Korean Baseball Organization joining the top finishers from Australia, Japan and Taiwan to fight for the bragging right of Asia’s best.
“We are all very excited to hear that it [the Asia Series] will resume after the two-year stoppage and are confident that we’ll be there to make Taiwan proud,” Chen Rei-chen, skipper of the Brother Elephants, the CPBL defending champs, told the Taipei Times.
Japan dominated the first four Asia Series tournaments, winning all four titles on their own turf, while Taiwan and South Korea each snatched up a pair of -second-place finishes.
Similar to previous years, this year’s competition will use a round-robin format in the first round, before the top two finishers battle for the title and NT$18 million (US$624,000) in prize money. The second-place finisher will take home NT$10 million, while the third and fourth-place finishers will each pick up NT$3 million for their participation.
Japanese badminton star Chiharu Shida on Tuesday told Chinese fans to “stop stalking” her, adding that she was “very scared” by the unwanted attention. Shida, who won women’s doubles bronze at the Paris Olympics last year, has a strong following in China partly because of her engagement with the local culture. The 27-year-old, currently competing at the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo, China, has been dubbed the “Badminton Goddess” by fans and media. She hit out at some supporters on Tuesday, accusing them in an Instagram post of taking their fandom too far. “Every time we compete in China we always experience the harm
Two people died on Thursday after fans and police clashed outside the Estadio Monumental in Santiago ahead of a game in South America’s Copa Libertadores, Chilean authorities said. The fatalities happened shortly before the match between Chile’s Colo-Colo and Brazilian club Fortaleza, when police blocked about 100 fans when they attempted to enter the stadium. There were conflicting accounts of how the fatalities occurred, with local media reporting that one of the dead was a 13-year-old boy. The other victim was an 18-year-old woman, according to a relative at the hospital where she was treated. The fans died after being caught underneath a
A potential European league could be a gold mine for the NBA as the top-flight North American league looks to muscle its way into a deep pool of talent across the Atlantic Ocean. The NBA is exploring the launch of a European league with world basketball governing body FIBA as a partner, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last week, with an eye toward a 16-team format made up of 12 permanent clubs and four qualifiers. The continent’s longstanding Euroleague quickly signaled its readiness to enter into talks with the NBA, even as it has balked at the idea of another league in
Hans Niemann, the chess grand master at the heart of an alleged cheating scandal, has yet to provide an explanation on his late withdrawal from the Freestyle Grand Slam in Paris. Niemann, who was accused of cheating by world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in 2023 before the matter was settled outside court, received a wild card for the event, but informed organizers he was pulling out for “personal reasons” less than 48 hours before the start of the 12-player tournament. “I texted him on Friday at 7pm. I said: ‘Hans, we’re already here. Are you here as well?’ And he read the
RSS