Baseball fans are heading back to the diamond this year -- some for the first time, others with fond memories of the good old days.
With 300 plus games in store for the new season, two new teams and a unified governing body for the sport, baseball looks to be in good shape.
The merger of the Taiwan Major League and Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) should bring back some of the luster that was lost after the betting scandals of 1996 and the following years of rivalry between the two leagues.
As a mark of the importance which the "national game" is said to hold for the country, the president and over 300 officials will turn up for the first game tomorrow, between the CPBL champion Brother Elephants and what will be its new rival Taipei team, Naluwan Gida.
It should be a fitting start to the season and a new era for local professional baseball.
The CPBL was formed in 1989 and was an immediate success for a baseball-loving public that was used to Little League successes and a good international reputation.
In the early to mid-1990s star player salaries kept on rising as average gates climbed and the big games attracted more than 100,000 fans.
But greed got in the way.
Betting on games was rampant and became so bad that organized crime got involved. Stories of players being pistol whipped and kidnapped for losing a game on which a lot of money was lost made the rounds.
Soon, investigators revealed that there was widespread corruption, from gangsters to pressure tactics in the locker room.
It all ended badly, with the Chinatimes Eagles being ejected from the league when its players were found to have thrown games.
Two of the founding franchises of the CPBL, the Weichuan Dragons and Mercury Tigers then folded for financial reasons, as fans realized the games were not real contests and stopped going to the ballpark.
A rival league was begun in 1996 by Sampo Inc, which lost out on TV rights and for the last six years there has been a battle between the two leagues which put off the punters and caused a further slump in the fortunes of professional baseball.
It was in the interest of everyone to merge the two leagues and when they did so at the end of last year there was relief all round, from government officials to the ordinary fan.
Now, professional baseball in Taiwan has been given another chance to relive its glory days again.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
HSIEH MAKES QUARTERS: Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium won in the women’s doubles and face Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Sofia Kenin of the US Top-ranked Iga Swiatek and US Open champion Coco Gauff were knocked out of the women’s singles at the Miami Open on Monday, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced in the women’s doubles. Swiatek lost to Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-4, 6-2, hours after third seed Gauff fell in three sets to No. 23 Caroline Garcia 6-3, 1-6, 6-2. Alexandrova beat a top-ranked player for the first time and advanced to face Jessica Pegula, a 7-6 (7/1), 6-3 winner over Emma Navarro, in the quarter-finals. Alexandrova recorded her second win over Swiatek, following a 2021 victory in Melbourne. Swiatek had won their three matches since. “We played quite