Baseball legend Wang Chien-ming (王建民) on Monday issued a statement saying he would not be available to play for Taiwan in the Premier 12 World Championship, as he would not be in top physical condition when the competition begins next month.
“My body showed signs of weariness after all the traveling in the [Major League Baseball] season,” Wang said.
“I know that I would not be able to regain full fitness for the game in November,” the pitcher said.
“It is for this reason that I have decided not to join the Chinese Taipei Baseball Team in competing in Premiere 12,” referring to the name Taiwan usually competes under in international sports.
Wang, who now pitches for a Triple-A minor-league team that is a feeder for the Seattle Mariners, rose to stardom after leading the 2006 and 2007 US Major League seasons by winning 19 games for the New York Yankees.
A foot injury sustained in 2008 cost him the entire 2010 season. He subsequently played for different MLB teams, but found limited success compared with his earlier performance levels.
In 2013, his pitching in the World Baseball Classic helped Taiwan beat Australia.
Organized by the World Baseball and Softball Confederation, the Premier 12 is a new flagship professional baseball championship, featuring national teams from the 12 highest-ranked baseball nations.
The first tournament is to be held in Taiwan next month.
Apart from Wang, three other current or former MLB pitchers that the national team management intended to draft have turned down the opportunity to play.
Baltimore Orioles pitcher Chen Wei-yin (陳偉殷), the Uni-President Lions’ Kuo Hong-chih (郭泓志) and Chicago Cubs pitcher Tseng Jen-ho (曾仁和) all turned down approaches.
Lamigo Monkeys pitcher Wang Yi-cheng (王溢正) and hitter Wang Po-jung (王柏融), Chinatrust Brothers reliever Hsieh Rong-hao (謝榮豪) and Lions pitcher Wang Ching-ming (王鏡銘) have been called up.
The final roster of 28 players for Taiwan is to be unveiled on Oct. 10.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching