Recent investigations by law enforcement officers into a dozen professional baseball players who were allegedly game-fixing, notorious bookies and pistol-wielding gangsters have hit the national headlines and broken the hearts of many diehard fans.
But not me. It might, however, be a make-or-break moment for the struggling baseball scene.
Taiwan's pro baseball almost collapsed in 1996-1997, when many ballplayers from the most successful teams relinquished their integrity. Players were threatened, seduced and then lost in the vicious circle of sex, money and violence. The circle never ends, not only in Taiwan but also in other baseball-mad countries like the US, Japan and South Korea.
Bookies will still be everywhere from ballpark stands to gambling Web sites, and ballplayers will be as vulnerable as they were when local baseball plummeted. So what can we do with the greedy bookies and the defenseless players? Do nothing, I suggest.
The solution can be as easy: we just need good baseball which only comes from professional, science-based training and a well-established league, something Taiwan's pro baseball has been painfully lacking for several years.
Widespread gambling on baseball never really hurts Taiwan's national pastime but it's the absence of truly "professional" baseball that has ruined one of our collective memories for generations.
Essentially, Taiwan's small-market baseball is in urgent need of an overhaul, as many baseball pundits have advised for quite some time, since the inception of the Chinese Professional Baseball League sixteen years ago. Competitive players, efficient training and cozy ballparks lead to good baseball. Bad baseball is always more threatening than bad guys like bookies and gang members.
Roger Cheng
Taipei
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