Baseball stadium closes

Several pop singers, including Tsai Chin (蔡琴) and Huang Pin-yuan (黃品源) attended a farewell party last night for Taipei City's 42-year-old baseball stadium, which is now set to be consigned to history.

The open-air stadium, located at the intersection of Tunhua North Road and Nanking East Road, is set to be demolished next month to make way for a bigger 15,000-seat sports stadium.

More than 10,000 sports events have been held at the stadium since its completion in 1959, when it could accommodate 1,020 spectators. Several renovations in 1976 expanded the capacity to 8,000.

The city government decided last year to tear down the stadium to build a bigger one. Baseball fans, however, have expressed concern over whether the new stadium will be as good as the old one in terms of attracting spectators.

The current stadium's design allows up to 10,000 spectators to disperse within half an hour. More recently built stadiums in Tienmu and Hsinchuang City have proven to be less efficient, critics said.

Demands for a better stadium began to be heard in 1991, when baseball fans called on premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) to build a dome stadium. In 1995, a proposal for a dome stadium, to be built at the same site, was passed under then-Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

After Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took over as mayor, the site of the project was shifted to the old Sungshan cigarette factory. That project has yet to be finalized.

The popularity of baseball in Taiwan has been sagging under a range of problems, including gambling scandals, in recent years.