Facing former Oriole Jeremy Guthrie, Greater Kaohsiung native Chen Wei-yin (陳偉殷) started for the Baltimore Orioles in the critical third game of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) yesterday.
In front of 40,000-plus fans in Kansas City, the Orioles starter pitched a solid 5 1/3 innings, giving up two earned runs.
Though Chen, 29, ended up on the losing end and putting the Orioles down zero games to three in the best-of-seven series, his pitching prowess had helped the team advance to the ALCS for the first time since 1997.
Photo: AFP
Chen also finished the regular season with an MLB career-low 3.54 ERA and led the team with 16 wins — the most wins for a left-handed Orioles pitcher since Jeff Ballard won 18 games in 1989.
A CAREER in TWO CITIES
Before joining the Baltimore Orioles, Chen pitched for the Chunichi Dragons in the Nippon Professional Baseball League.
Photo: AFP
He signed with the Chunichi Dragons in 2004 and relocated to Nagoya, Japan, where he picked up fluent Japanese. Despite his language skills, he found it difficult to adapt to baseball and life there.
He said that in Nagoya, he needed to consider the views of everyone — his peers, coaches, elders, and juniors — and the social interactions felt rigidly hierarchical.
It has been easier to mesh with his teammates in Baltimore, Chen said, because they don’t care about his age, or how long he has been playing.
In 2012, Chen signed a three-year, US$11.3 million contract with the Orioles and moved to Baltimore. He now spends 11 months out of the year there.
“I have been able to integrate with the team and the city and that has made me feel happy,” Chen said in Mandarin at ALCS Media day in Baltimore at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
His transition to the US was smoother also because he had already experienced culture shock before and knew to do some reconnaissance.
“The only worrying thing I heard from others before I came [to the US] was about the food. But actually, for me, food isn’t that important because I’m not a picky eater,” Chen said.
FAMILIES AND COACHES
There are, however, challenges to living in the US, Chen said, remarking that he misses Taiwan.
“The thing I miss the most is my family,” he said.
And with most overseas Chinese speakers preferring to use Mandarin Chinese, he also longs for more opportunities to speak Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). Chen said his Hoklo has regressed since leaving Taiwan.
Outside of baseball, Chen enjoys the relative ease with which he can play golf. Compared with Asia, golf courses in the US are relatively inexpensive and more accessible. Chen said he’s a fan of other sports such as American football and ice hockey, though he doesn’t fully understand the rules.
On the diamond, Chen has needed to readjust his mindset. In Japan, baseball technique was most important. In the Major Leagues, there is a different priority.
“In the US, all they want to do is win,” Chen said.
POSITIVE EXPERIENCES
His experiences with US coaches have been relatively positive. He said that in Japan and other parts of Asia, baseball managers have a tendency to focus on a player’s weaknesses in the hope of improving those aspects.
Not being able to speak English fluently does create challenges, though. He said he can learn a lot from the Orioles manager, Buck Showalter.
However, he added that he does not always fully understand Showalter’s tactics.
“In the US, they can inspire you by pointing out the good aspects of your play. The culture is different so my feeling is different.”
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless