Tue, Aug 24, 2004 page20

• Taiwan's pitcher takes blame for Olympic failure

  • By Lin Chieh-yu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Chang Chih-chia (張誌家), the Taiwanese pitcher who plays in Japan's professional baseball league, claimed yesterday that he should shoulder all responsibility for the Taiwan baseball team's failure to enter the final round of the Athens Olympic Games. He urged all Taiwanese to continue to support their athletes and put the blame on him alone.

  "Head coach Hsu Sheng-min (徐生明) gave me two games, I messed up both, especially with an extremely awful performance against Italy, which resulted in Taiwan failing to qualify for the semifinal," Chang said.

  "The entire team, except me, satisfied all their supporters' expectations and performed well, and therefore, everyone should ascribe the failure to me," he said.

  Chang is known as a pretentious athlete and he was confident he would lead the national team into the final round before the Olympic games. However, he has been keeping a low profile since he had been unable to suppress Italy's offense on Aug. 20, resulting in Taiwan's 4-5 defeat.

  Regarding the Athens Olympic baseball tournament as the greatest setback of his career, Chang promised to accept the national team's call-up without any hesitation in the future, if the team needs him, to revenge not only himself but all baseball fans.

  In reviewing the entire team, head coach Hsu confessed that his strategies about the rotation of pitchers were not good and he made some crucial mistakes.

  "I did not have enough time to get to know the real condition of each pitcher. I therefore made a few inappropriate decisions, which obviously can be proved as bad management because we lost the games," Hsu said.

  He said that the team pitchers lacked experience and failed to resolve crises. Too many errors by the fielders were also a crucial factor in Team Taiwan's defeats.

  During Taiwan's first preliminary match with Canada, Lin En-yu (林恩宇) was sent to replace starter Chang Chih-chia in the seventh inning. He made only one out, but allowed four runs, which destroyed the team's morale. Keng Po-hsuan (耿伯軒), national team rookie, served as the set-up in the seventh inning during the match with Cuba, and gave up five runs, which again terminated the team's will to reverse the game.

  Baseball commentator Tseng Wen-cheng (曾文誠) said that Hsu's bad management was a crucial factor.

  "Hsu is famous for being an intangible coach with the mind of a gambler because he always employ bold tactics, which sometimes completely violate baseball common sense," Tseng said.

  Other baseball experts hoped that all Taiwanese baseball fans would recognize the fact that Team Taiwan was in essence not good enough.

  "The Athens Olympic Baseball competition has become the stage of those athletes who play in the US professional league," said Liu Chih-shen (劉志昇), a former national pitcher who now serves as Taiwan's team consultant, "and the results of the preliminary round clearly fit in with the US professional baseball leagues' standard."

  Citing the first match with Canada, Liu said that Taiwan's athletes underestimated their opponents' abilities and were put out after inappropriately advancing to bases.

  During the match, Cheng Chao-hang (鄭兆行) made the team's first hit, a single, but he tried to advance to second base and eventually was put out. Then, Huang Chung-yi (黃忠義), who made a single in the ninth inning, tried to return to the home plate to score Taiwan's first run after Chen Chin-feng swiped a high flyball deep into left field, but was put out due to the Canadian leftfielder's accurate throwing.
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