The Taint of Scandal in Taiwan's Pro League (盂峻瑋)
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The Taint of Scandal in Taiwan's Pro League (盂峻瑋)
By JONATHAN ADAMS
Published: October 28, 2009
TAIPEI — The latest baseball scandal to hit Taiwan has many gloomy
about the future of a sport that has given the island an identity
On Monday, prosecutors opened an investigation into whether players in
Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League deliberately lost games
in exchange for payoffs. Former players and alleged gambling
ringleaders have been detained. On Wednesday, the police questioned
nine more players, eight were named as suspects, according to local
media.
The allegations include the play of the Brother Elephants, the
island’s most popular team, as it lost the Taiwan Series to the Uni-
President 7-11 Lions. The Lions won the seventh, and final, game
Sunday.
Taiwan’s 20-year old professional baseball league has been plagued by
such corruption scandals. Gangsters have in the past intimidated
players, but this time, a spokesman said, prosecutors have ruled out
the possibility that players were threatened or intimidated.
But league officials had been upbeat recently, saying game attendance
had bounced back this season, that the government was doing more to
promote the game and that the tiny league — numbering only four teams
after others folded amid scandal or financial losses — was
retrenching.
For many Taiwanese, the stakes are far higher than a mere sport’s
survival. Baseball is one of the few arenas in which Taiwan has won
recognition on the world stage.
“In the past, we used baseball to raise our morale and reinforce our
national identity,” said Yu Jun-wei (盂峻瑋), author of a recent book on
the history of baseball in Taiwan and a professor at National Taiwan
Sport University in Taichung. “It still serves a political purpose.
China always says we’re part of their territory. But we can use
baseball to prove to ourselves and others that we still exist in
international society.”
Yu said the scandal was especially damaging because it involved the
Brother Elephants and one of its top stars — the pitcher Tsao Chin-
hui, the first Taiwanese to have played in U.S. major league baseball,
for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies.
Tsao was one reason attendance rose this season, his first in Taiwan’s
professional league, reaching an average of 4,000 per game, double
last year’s dismal showing, according to the league.
Tsao maintains his innocence but said prosecutors had searched his
home.
Richard Wang, director of international affairs for the league, said
prosecutors had searched the Brother Elephants’ dormitory Monday,
seized three cellphones and detained two former baseball players. He
said on Tuesday that the league had been “hurt badly” by the latest
allegations.
“It’s devastating, for sure,” Wang said. “If what the media said is
true — that players were voluntarily cooperating with bookies — that’s
really bad news.”
“In the past, players were throwing games under pressure and threats
from the mafia. If this time there were no threats or pressure, and it
was just the players’ greed, that’s really sad.”
The Japanese brought baseball to Taiwan after they colonized the
island in 1895.
Taiwan’s string of Little League titles in the 1970s confirmed that
the game was a rare arena for the island to shine internationally. The
victories were a sorely needed morale booster in a decade in which the
United States broke diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing as
the legitimate government of China and Taiwan lost representation in
the United Nations.
Many Little League heroes went on to play in Taiwan’s first
professional league, established with high hopes in 1990.
Since the peak of “baseball fever” in the early 1990s, though, the
game’s fortunes have waned. Attendance has plummeted, as has
television viewership, especially after satellite channels brought
U.S. Major League Baseball and basketball into Taiwan homes.
Last year, Taiwan’s league had shrunk to four teams, down from 11 in
two leagues in the late 1990s, after the dMedia T-Rex team was kicked
out amid game-fixing allegations and the Chinatrust Whales folded.
Worse, though, was Taiwan’s loss to China’s team at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics. Not only is China an obvious political rival, it also had
virtually no history of baseball until very recently, compared with
Taiwan’s century of play.
“It was a humiliation, because we always thought our standard was much
higher than China’s,” said Professor Yu. “Baseball is one of the few
sports we can beat them at.”
The loss sparked a round of soul-searching and government commitments
to shore up the game. A second loss to China at the World Baseball
Classic in March prompted the island’s then-prime minister to declare
the Taiwan team’s performance “unacceptable.”
According to Lance Lan, an official at the cabinet-level Sports
Affairs Council who was previously involved in baseball promotion, the
government has adopted a four-year, 1 billion Taiwan dollar, or $31
million, plan to help turn the sport around. “It’s to help upgrade our
country’s baseball, especially at the grass roots,” he said.
If the game-fixing allegations prove true, the grass roots may be the
only thing left. Chris Day, a spokesman for the Chinese Taipei
Baseball Association, said the Brother Elephants’ coach had publicly
vowed last year to disband the team if its players were found to be
involved in throwing games.
“The Brother Elephants are a major team — they’re like the New York
Yankees of Taiwan,” said Day. “If they close down, it’s going to be
very hard for the league to sustain itself.”
“This isn’t four guys sitting down and cheating at mah-jongg, it’s a
matter of lying to the whole public and baseball-loving population
here,” Day said.
Richard Lin, secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Baseball
Association, said that better compensation and free-agent rights could
also help keep players honest. He said players’ salaries averaged just
100,000 Taiwan dollars a month but should be triple that.
Regardless of the scandals, though, baseball will remain Taiwan’s
national pastime, Lin said, because Taiwanese baseball heroes, like
the New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming, continue to inspire
younger generations.
Basketball may be all the rage, but few Taiwanese are physically able
to compete on the level of the National Basketball Association or in
international team competitions.
“Taiwanese like baseball because they know we have a chance to get a
championship, or at least second or third place,” Lin said. “But in
basketball? Impossible.”