Each of Taiwan’s six special municipalities is to have a professional baseball team next year, as the CPBL yesterday announced that a Kaohsiung-based team run by Taiwan Steel Group (TSG) would start playing in the league’s second division and join the top flight in 2024.
“The glory era of Taiwan baseball is back,” CPBL commissioner Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) told a ceremony in Taipei to introduce the TSG Hawks.
“This is a historic day... The TSG Hawks are joining our league as the newest franchise,” he said, adding that the Hawks would “bring more excitement” by adding a fifth competitor for each of the existing teams.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Tsai, who is also Legislative Yuan deputy speaker, said that the league would have six teams for the first time since 2008, fulfilling the dream of many Taiwanese baseball fans.
“The TSG Hawks will be based at Chengching Lake Stadium,” he said, adding that they would attract fans in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County.
Senior representatives of the five other teams — the Taipei-based Wei Chuan Dragons, the New Taipei City-based Fubon Guardians, the Taoyuan-based Rakuten Monkeys, the Taichung-based CTBC Brothers and the Tainan-based Uni-President Lions — attended the ceremony to welcome the new team to what Tsai called the “CPBL family.”
TSG chairman Hsieh Yu-min (謝裕民) unveiled the team’s logo, showing a stylized soaring hawk in the shape of the letter T, and the colors for the team’s uniforms, which would mostly be dark green.
Former CPBL public relations official Toyo Liu (劉東洋) would be the Hawks’ general manager, while Lin Chen-hsien (林振賢), who played for the Mercury Tigers in the 1990s and whose last coaching position was at the then-La New-Lamigo Monkeys, would be their interim head coach and team coordinator, Hsieh said.
“Besides referring to TSG, our T logo also represents Taiwan,” Hsieh said, expressing the hope that the team would soon participate in international tournaments.
TSG, which last year posted revenue of NT$70 billion (US$2.37 billion), owns 56 companies and subsidiaries, including 14 TAIEX-listed units.
The conglomerate’s focus areas are metal production, chemicals, telecommunication and online networks, as well as sports and recreation activities, he said.
TSG, which also owns the Tainan-based TSG Steel soccer franchise and the TSG Ghosthawks basketball team, would be Taiwan’s only operator of teams in each of Taiwan’s three major sports, he said.
TSG would budget about NT$200 million for the Hawks each year, he said, adding that the team would start to recruit players this year to start playing in the CPBL’s second division next year and join the top flight in 2024.
The team’s philosophy would be based on “professionalism, hard work and discipline,” he said.
“We only want players on our team who have good ethical behavior... Players with bad characters and poor conduct are not welcome on our team,” Hsieh said.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) addressed the event in a video message, while Kaohsiung Sports Development Bureau Director Hou Tsun-yao (侯尊堯) attended in person.
Hou said that the new franchise would attract new investment and infrastructure projects to the area near its ballpark, including a mass rapid transit line extension and city-backed urban renewal plans.
“Around the stadium we will see new projects for residential buildings and shopping malls,” Hou said. “Watching a baseball game will be a whole-day event for the whole family.”
The CPBL had six teams in the 2000s, before the Chinatrust Whales folded and the Dmedia T-REX had their franchise right revoked over a game-fixing scandal. The league had four teams for more than a decade, before the return of the Wei Chuan Dragons in 2020.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and