Taiwan, which calls baseball its national sport, is facing yet another professional baseball game-fixing scandal. What future does professional baseball have? Will the scam destroy it?
The earliest recorded game-fixing scandal in the US occurred in 1865. Three members of the New York Mutuals accepted US$100 each for throwing the Sept. 28 game to the Brooklyn Eckfords. Two of them were suspended for life.
In 1877, the Louisville Scandal took place. The scandal nearly destroyed professional baseball in the US. Eventually, the Louisville team folded and four players involved were suspended for life.
A similar gambling scandal happened in Taiwan in 1997. At that time, Kuo Chien-chen (
Then Taiwanese player Chen Chin-feng (
Today, professional baseball is facing another gambling scandal, eight years since the last one. Will the sport be able to revitalize its fans' trust in the same way US professional baseball did after the 1905 and 1908 scandals involving the New York Giants, and even the 1920 Black Sox scandal, in which media discovered that the 1919 World Series had been fixed?
Perhaps Taiwan can make it, and we certainly hope that it can. But there is nothing that can work as an injection to revitalize the sport at present.
Besides, compared to the relatively healthier system of US professional baseball, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) only passively accepts judicial investigations, and has never taken any active moves.
Fans would rather believe that the players and staff involved in the scandal are absolutely innocent. But if the current suspicions turn out to be true, there is reason to worry and wonder how the CPBL will go about bringing back the passionate support of its fans.
Wang Chao-yu is a student in the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date. In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
In a recent essay, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Christian Whiton, accuses Taiwan of diplomatic incompetence — claiming Taipei failed to reach out to Trump, botched trade negotiations and mishandled its defense posture. Whiton’s narrative overlooks a fundamental truth: Taiwan was never in a position to “win” Trump’s favor in the first place. The playing field was asymmetrical from the outset, dominated by a transactional US president on one side and the looming threat of Chinese coercion on the other. From the outset of his second term, which began in January, Trump reaffirmed his
Despite calls to the contrary from their respective powerful neighbors, Taiwan and Somaliland continue to expand their relationship, endowing it with important new prospects. Fitting into this bigger picture is the historic Coast Guard Cooperation Agreement signed last month. The common goal is to move the already strong bilateral relationship toward operational cooperation, with significant and tangible mutual benefits to be observed. Essentially, the new agreement commits the parties to a course of conduct that is expressed in three fundamental activities: cooperation, intelligence sharing and technology transfer. This reflects the desire — shared by both nations — to achieve strategic results within
RSS