Vice Premier Eric Chu visited the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) yesterday to receive a briefing on the league’s corruption problems.
Chu, who was asked by President Ma Ying-jeou to head an ad hoc government team to chart plans to restore the image of professional baseball, was briefed by CPBL chairman Chao Shou-po.
He also consulted with the managers of the four baseball clubs that make up the league over ways to solve the problems facing the sport.
The league suffered a blow after several of its players were probed on Oct. 26 for throwing games and many of them confessed to game-fixing in return for payments from underground bookmakers.
The calls to restore the image of the CPBL, however, are not shared by all baseball lovers.
One sports commentator said in a letter to the editor of the Chinese-language China Times on Wednesday that the four professional baseball clubs were not worth saving.
The writer said the clubs were only concerned with their own vested interests and that they only cared about how to protect those interests.
It is the sport itself, not the clubs, that the government should help, the commentator said.
He dismissed the government’s conference on Tuesday as having been “useless” because it produced nothing but empty words, and said that if the league and the clubs did not quit playing for a while and carry out thorough reform, they would not win back the fans. The league needs to give itself a new lease of life, the commentator said.
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