Taiwan's baseball leagues combine

Taiwan's two professional baseball leagues merged yesterday in a new effort to revive interest in a sport struggling to recover from a gambling scandal and money woes.

An ownership feud seven years ago caused professional baseball to split into the Chinese Professional Baseball League and the Taiwan Major League.

Although baseball is Taiwan's "national sport," it became clear the country could not support two leagues with four teams each. At the end of last season, the younger Taiwan Major League announced that it would dissolve.

At a news conference yesterday, CPBL Commissioner Harvey Tung (陳河東) said the two leagues would now join forces.

"From today on, we will just have one league in Taiwan," Tung said.

The new league will be called the Chinese Professional Baseball Major League (中華職業棒球大聯盟), which inserts the word "big" or "major" into the old Chinese CPBL name.

The two sides have not discussed the issue of an English name for the league yet, said Richard Wang, CPBL director of international affairs.

"We are hoping to have six teams, but right now we are waiting for the fifth and sixth teams to pop up," Wang said.

He said two teams would likely be the Taiwan Major League's Agan club from Taichung and the Gida team from the capital, Taipei.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, the holding company of Taiwan Major League, Naluwan, must sell one of its two franchises to a third party by Jan. 31.

First Commercial Bank has been identified as a potential buyer of Agan, but no contract has been signed. Naluwan is expected to take over Taipei Gida and must sell it at the end of the year, under the terms of the agreement.

If Naluwan does not sell one of the two clubs by the end of the month, then it is likely the new league will start with just the four old CPBL teams.

If there are six teams, each will play 100 games during the regular season, leading up to the playoffs in October and a best-of-seven Taiwan Series as the finale of the season.

Baseball has been struggling since a 1997 gambling scandal rocked the CPBL, founded 14 years ago. Several top players were involved in the scandal and one team had to withdraw from the league. Two others left because of financial problems.

But Wang said that there has been new interest in the game since Taiwan upset Japan and won the bronze in the baseball World Cup two years ago. The tournament is organized by the Switzerland-based International Baseball Federation.

Last season, average attendance at CPBL games was 3,000 -- up 58 percent from the year before, Wang said.

The Brother Elephants and Chinatrust Whales are set to play the new league's season-opener in early March in Taipei.

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