For better or worse, baseball is Taiwan’s national sport.
With the latest crop of game-fixing confessions and an ongoing investigation, however, “worse” is the word, and baseball fans have every reason to feel and express disgust.
But the targets of their anger should by no means be limited to the offending players. The baseball industry is sick — possibly terminally — and there is little sign of the change needed to stamp out criminal influence and restore public trust.
The Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) — not Chinese, fitfully professional and barely a league — has utterly failed to provide the oversight that would have prevented the latest sequence of game-fixing from reaching such a diabolical climax.
Previous game-fixing sagas — the most recent being the expulsion of the Macoto Cobras-cum-dmedia T-Rex franchise — at least were limited to the ordinary season.
This time, the criminals, the venal players and their hopeless organizations have stained the entire season, from the first game to the series-deciding match last weekend between the Uni-President Lions and the Brother Elephants.
The CPBL had enough warning of the weaknesses in its organization and its inability to police suspect players. It did not take seriously its responsibility to understand why Taiwanese baseball is so vulnerable to game-fixing, let alone implement strict oversight policies and player-focused reforms to combat it.
Partly because of its inflexible organizational structure, and partly because of its mediocre officials, the CPBL was insufficiently vigilant, and the sport is close to paying the final price.
It is hard to see how corporate sponsors will fork out good money in a time of economic instability for a flailing competition that has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises.
The Cabinet’s Sports Affairs Council, meanwhile, will continue to wash its hands of any responsibility, regardless of its formal agenda, for ensuring that Taiwan’s sporting environment flourishes — especially baseball. In a country whose bureaucratic culture trains officials to think that sports exist for their benefit, and not the other way around, this comes as no surprise.
As for the diehard fans, will words of comfort make any difference? No. They follow a code that is among the most vulnerable to criminal incursion; they have watched attendance figures nosedive in rough proportion to the credibility of the league; the sport’s administrators are a mixture of braggarts, cronies and incompetents; the dedicated personnel in the industry are demoralized and disempowered; and the government offers little more than weak promises of continued support — even as it diverts precious resources to irrelevant baseball vanity projects linked to city and county governments.
The shame that this episode has generated is not just personal, professional and institutional. It is national: It is a slap in the face for everyone who feels pride when Taiwanese teams perform — at home or in international competitions.
It is also a chilling symbol of failure and abject lack of character for the thousands of children who love baseball and who hoped one day to represent their country in this sport. Field of dreams? Time to wake up.
The first Donald Trump term was a boon for Taiwan. The administration regularized the arms sales process and enhanced bilateral ties. Taipei will not be so fortunate the second time around. Given recent events, Taiwan must proceed with the assumption that it cannot count on the United States to defend it — diplomatically or militarily — during the next four years. Early indications suggested otherwise. The nomination of Marco Rubio as US Secretary of State and the appointment of Mike Waltz as the national security advisor, both of whom have expressed full-throated support for Taiwan in the past, raised hopes that
Whether in terms of market commonality or resource similarity, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co is the biggest competitor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). The two companies have agreed to set up factories in the US and are also recipients of subsidies from the US CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law by former US president Joe Biden. However, changes in the market competitiveness of the two companies clearly reveal the context behind TSMC’s investments in the US. As US semiconductor giant Intel Corp has faced continuous delays developing its advanced processes, the world’s two major wafer foundries, TSMC and
There is nothing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could do to stop the tsunami-like mass recall campaign. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reportedly said the party does not exclude the option of conditionally proposing a no-confidence vote against the premier, which the party later denied. Did an “actuary” like Chu finally come around to thinking it should get tough with the ruling party? The KMT says the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is leading a minority government with only a 40 percent share of the vote. It has said that the DPP is out of touch with the electorate, has proposed a bloated
Authorities last week revoked the residency permit of a Chinese social media influencer surnamed Liu (劉), better known by her online channel name Yaya in Taiwan (亞亞在台灣), who has more than 440,000 followers online and is living in Taiwan with a marriage-based residency permit, for her “reunification by force” comments. She was asked to leave the country in 10 days. The National Immigration Agency (NIA) on Tuesday last week announced the decision, citing the influencer’s several controversial public comments, including saying that “China does not need any other reason to reunify Taiwan with force” and “why is it [China] hesitant
RSS