Taiwan's national baseball team has one last chance to earn a berth in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games baseball tournament, and despite the likely absence of its foreign-based players, the team says it's ready.
It had better be.
The squad drew the wrath of home fans late last year when it finished an embarrassing eighth in the Baseball World Cup in November and a disappointing third in the Asian Baseball Championship in December, and many worried that baseball in Taiwan was in a state of permanent decline.
But the team can redeem itself by finishing in the top three of the final eight-team Olympic qualifying tournament that will be held in Taichung and Douliou, Yunlin County, from March 3 to March 14.
"In fact, this is a five-for-three competition," manager Hung Yi-chung (
Hung was referring to the quality of the field, with five countries -- Taiwan, South Korea, Canada, Australia and Mexico -- expected to compete for the final three Olympic slots.
The remaining three teams, international baseball minnows Germany, Spain and South Africa, are seen as having little chance of staging a breakthrough.
South Korea is expected to be the strongest team, Hung said, so Taiwan's game plan will be to win two of its three round-robin games against Australia, Mexico and Canada to secure a top three finish.
Hung's task will be complicated by the absence of Taiwan's foreign-based stars. Pitchers Tsao Chin-hui (曹錦輝) and Keng Po-hsuan (耿伯軒), who play in the US, and Lin En-yu (林恩宇) and Hsu Ming-chieh (許銘傑), who pitch in Japan, have all dropped out and opted to concentrate on advancing their professional careers.
That means Hung will be left with a roster composed mostly of players who compete in Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) or local amateurs, but the manager said he's prepared to play with an all-local 24-man roster if need be.
Major League Baseball has prohibited players on teams' 40-man rosters from participating in the Olympic qualifiers.
Hung hopes to have his team sharp by the time the tournament opens next month. To get the players back into game condition, the national squad will play a six-game warm-up series against the six CPBL teams, beginning on Monday.
SSC Napoli’s Italian Serie A title hopes suffered a late setback on Sunday when they were held to a 2-2 draw at home against Genoa, setting up a thrilling season finale with closest rivals Inter just one point behind. The hosts remain top with 78 points, holding a slim lead over Inter, who won 2-0 at Torino earlier on Sunday, with two rounds remaining. To make matters worse for Napoli, midfielder Stanislav Lobotka, struggling with an ankle injury, was forced off just minutes after the match began. Scott McTominay delivered a perfect pass into the box where Romelu Lukaku got
Harry Kane opened the scoring ahead of lifting his first career silverware as Bayern Munich beat Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-0, with veteran Thomas Mueller playing his last home game for the club. Bayern officially won the title on May 4 when defending champions Bayer Leverkusen were held to a 2-2 draw at Freiburg, but were presented with the Bundesliga shield in front of their home fans at full-time. Dripping wet after being showered with beer by teammates, Kane said the title win was “an incredible feeling,” and hoped it would be “the first of many.” “It’s been lot of hard work, a lot of
Taiwanese e-sports veteran Lin “ET” Chia-hung yesterday successfully defended his King of Fighters XV title at this year’s Evolution Championship Series: Japan (EVO Japan), securing his second consecutive championship. Lin claimed victory with a 3-1 win over Japanese pro gamer “mok” in the grand final, repeating his earlier 3-1 win against the same opponent in the winners’ final. The 40-year-old earned a ￥1 million (US$6,897) cash prize at the two-day tournament, which drew 294 competitors. Mok, Lin’s toughest rival in the bracket, took home ￥400,000 as runner-up. Lin remains undefeated in match sets against mok in King of Fighters XV, holding a 10-0 record,
Batting great Virat Kohli yesterday announced his immediate retirement from Test cricket, just days before India name their squad for a tour to England. Kohli, who scored 9,230 runs in 123 matches at an average of 46.85, posted his decision on Instagram five days after India captain Rohit Sharma called time on his own Test career. Since making his debut in 2011, Kohli struck 30 hundreds and 31 fifties with a highest score of 254 not out, mainly batting at number four in the order. “It’s been 14 years since I first wore the baggy blue in Test cricket,” the
RSS