President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) recently received the nation’s youth baseball team, which has won several international tournaments this year. Right then and there, Tsai announced three policies to improve the development of Taiwanese baseball. The policies include measures aimed at increasing the number of professional teams, perfecting the professional farm team system and enhancing stadium facilities.
Objectively speaking, these three policies miss the point. They indicate that when the president’s staff were formulating policies, they only focused on the commercial and competitive aspects of the sport, overlooking the importance of baseball education on a fundamental level and the necessity of creating a positive environment for the sport.
Whenever there is a serious setback or when a major game is about to start, all sorts of activities to save the national sport or promotional projects and subsidies can be seen in Taiwan. For example, there have been seminars on the future of Taiwanese baseball, national baseball affairs conferences, plans to invigorate baseball, projects in relation to selection, training, as well as tournaments, subsidies and projects that prioritize eastern Taiwan.
In 2020 there are to be six national baseball teams competing for the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo. Each of these nations will spare no effort in relation to the selection process, training, game rules and qualification rules.
Based on my research over the past decade, there are six keys to perfecting Taiwan’s baseball environment.
First, the basic educational purpose and sports values of students’ baseball activities should be emphasized.
Well-known US sociologist Gary Alan Fine said: “A Little League baseball team is a culture-producing group that has both task-oriented goals (winning baseball games, learning technical baseball skills) and socio-emotional goals (having fun, making friends).”
Fine said that the essence of sport is not exercise, but memory.
In Taiwan, baseball players are trained like soldiers and the price of winning is usually to focus narrowly on baseball at the expense of getting a proper education. However, beginning in 2013, the Taiwan Black Panther High School Baseball Tournaments — the Taiwanese version of Japan’s Summer Koshien — have brought a ray of hope with their focus on many important sports values.
Hence, actively subsidizing baseball teams, baseball clubs and community baseball teams at the grassroots level, setting up safe baseball fields, changing people’s single-minded pursuit of winning and enriching the educational content of baseball education could help young baseball players of school age move past the focus on winning or losing and enjoy the pleasures of team sports and inter-school games.
Second, a comprehensive program should be established that incorporates professional skill cultivation and training backed by sports science for young and adult baseball players alike. In the past, many schools famous for their baseball teams used traditional methods to train their students, which required a great amount of time and caused mental and physical exhaustion and sports injuries.
The Sports Administration, the Student Baseball Federation and the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association should collaborate on the establishment of an integrated platform for talented baseball players and a mechanism to track and counsel players.
Talented baseball players should be picked in accordance with sports-science principles, and those with great potential should be sought out.
Physical prowess as well as basic academic performance and university entrance programs of great athletes should be improved.
In addition, sports injury prevention and counseling should be promoted as they are beneficial to the long-term development of potential professional athletes.
Third, tax relief or reward programs for baseball teams should be provided, along with incentives to encourage businesses to sponsor or adopt teams and encourage the establishment of advanced amateur adult teams, enterprise teams and club teams.
Continuous sponsorship from the private sector is usually what keeps teams alive and kicking. Therefore, adopting measures to encourage businesses to sponsor baseball teams and encourage their employees to take part in the sport and establish a system that provides a variety of career opportunities for players would bolster public participation in the sport.
Fourth, a professional coaching system must be implemented to improve coaches’ working conditions, rights and benefits. Only under a stable coach hiring system would baseball teams have a chance to undergo long-term comprehensive training.
Baseball coaches have to cope with the pressure of ensuring their teams put in good performances, carry the responsibility of disciplining team members and answer to parents and school teachers.
Many coaches are working in adverse conditions, with unreasonable wages, and face losing their jobs should they lose too many games.
Therefore, it is necessary to loosen up their performance evaluations — which are based on how many medals their team wins — and provide training courses or camps on a regular basis to build up coaches’ professional expertise and their knowledge about effective training.
Fifth, the professional baseball system and the wages and working conditions for professional players should be improved.
A safe environment should be provided for them to compete in tournaments and a mechanism to prevent sports injuries should be established.
Last, it is necessary to review the selection and training system for participation in international games, protect the insurance rights of baseball players who compete for the nation and set up a fair system to protect players’ rights and ensure that they receive reasonable returns for the commercial use of their images.
Most importantly, a platform should be set up to help veteran players become coaches and instructors once they retire from playing so that Taiwan’s professional baseball talent will not go to waste.
The policies needed to invigorate Taiwanese baseball must not be recklessly formulated. Neither should politicians give pledges recklessly.
The policies should address the number of professional baseball teams, the farm team system, baseball grounds and other facilities, how to provide flexible baseball education, promote training programs based on sports science, develop a mechanism to prevent sports injuries, increase the sources of business sponsorship, protect the working rights of coaches, improve the unfair labor system in professional baseball, increase the dignity of national team players and provide them with comprehensive rights and benefits.
If these policies are formulated and implemented wisely they will create an excellent environment for Taiwan’s baseball development.
Competitive tournaments are temporary, but the baseball education system, talent cultivation programs and a sound career system are forever. They are what would lay the foundation for competitive sports in this nation.
Lin Wen-lan is an assistant professor in the Institute of Sociology at National Tsing Hua University.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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