The Wei Chuan Dragons became the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s (CPBL) fifth team following a unanimous vote by the league’s executive council at a meeting yesterday afternoon.
The Dragons have selected Hsinchu, Kaohsiung, Chiayi County and Pingtung County as possible home bases, league commissioner John Wu (吳志揚) said, adding that the club must meet with officials in each locality and make a final decision as soon as possible.
The league’s teams agreed to change the rules for drafting players given the addition of another team, Wu said, adding that under the new rules, a team can draft one or two players from each team in the league, but cannot recruit players on teams’ 30-man roster or rookies drafted this year and next year.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The league has only had four baseball teams since 2008, when the Chinatrust Whales and dmedia T-Rex disbanded.
The Dragons, started in 1989, were one of the four founding teams in the league before they disbanded in 1999. To regain their league membership, the team must comply with new league rules that require a five-year royalty of NT$360 million (US$11.58 million), a NT$120 million franchise fee and a NT$100 million contribution to a baseball development fund.
The Dragons are to play in the minor league for one year before competing in the major league.
The league also convened a meeting to select a national team manager for the World Baseball Softball Confederation Premier 12 tournament, which has games in Taichung and Taoyuan in November.
Winning the tournament would qualify the nation to compete at next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.
Lamigo Monkeys manager Hung Yi-chung (洪一中) turned down an invitation to lead the national team, despite being recommended by three other league managers, Wu said.
Hung might have rejected the offer because he already served as the national team manager and wished to leave the opportunity open for other talented people, he added.
“Hung is still our top pick, but we will consult other qualified individuals, including current and former professional baseball team managers,” he said.
The Sports Administration’s regulations stipulate that the national team manager for a Premier 12 tournament must undergo a national selection process conducted by a selection and training committee, Wu said.
Yesterday’s meeting decided that the selection and training committee would consist of the four CPBL team managers, one CPBL representative and three representatives from the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association, he said.
The committee would start work as soon as possible, Wu added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods