Baseball player at center of betting scandal resurfaces

A former baseball star at the center of the 1996 betting scandal that rocked the domestic game has turned up in China.

Kuo Chien-chen (郭建成) was a ringleader of the infamous 1997 Taiwan game-fixing scandal and admitted accepting US$1.5 million from gangsters.

A former pitcher with the China Times Eagles and head of the players' association in the Chinese Professional Baseball League, Kuo received the heaviest sentence among the 22 players convicted -- 30 months in jail and a NT$3 million fine.

Kuo and the other convicted players were also slapped with lifetime bans, even though their cases are still on appeal.

The scandal led to the demise of the Eagles and a slump from which Taiwan pro baseball has only just recovered.

Five years later, Kuo is back on the mound. But not on home soil. He is now in China with the Tianjin Lions.

The 37-year-old Kuo earned the first save ever recorded in the new China Baseball League at the end of last month.

He also doubles as the Lions' pitching coach and was recently named as a coach on the Chinese national team.

And he's not the only banned Taiwanese player to find a new lease on life in China.

Former President Lion infielders Chiang Tai-chuan (江泰權) and Cheng Pai-sheng (鄭百勝) are also on the Tianjin coaching staff.

Chiang, who won a silver medal for Taiwan at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, was named the manager of the PRC national team with Cheng also joining as a coach.