Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought.
“It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game.
Photo: Gene J. Puskar, AP
Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games.
“There is a saying in Taiwan that it takes 10 years to sharpen a sword,” he said.
Lai said he discovered the group of young players two years ago and the LLBWS again.
Photo: AP
Ace pitcher Lin Chin-tse (林晉擇), who can throw 80mph (129kph), carried a perfect game into the fifth inning, retiring the first 13 batters he faced.
He threw 58 pitches over five innings, allowing one hit and no walks while striking out four.
At the plate, Lin also drove in three runs with a triple during Taiwan’s five-run fifth inning.
Photo: AP
“I am very excited,” he said. “In the first inning I was nervous, but after that it was smooth.”
Reliever Chen Qi-sheng (陳啟盛) pitched the sixth to seal the shutout.
It was Taiwan’s 18th title overall, the most of any country beside the US.
Taiwan won five straight championships from 1977 to 1981 in the annual tournament, which features half its teams from the US and half from abroad.
Representing the Asia-Pacific region, Dong Yuan advanced by beating Aruba 1-0 in Saturday’s international final. Las Vegas, also on Saturday, won the US championship 8-2 over Fairfield, Connecticut.
Last year, Taiwan’s Guishan Elementary School from Taoyuan finished runners-up.
The most recent international champion before Sunday were Japan in 2017.
In Taipei, President William Lai (賴清德) congratulated the players for their outstanding performance.
In a post on social media, Lai said: “My warmest congratulations to Tung-Yuan Little League, our @LittleLeague World Series champions! Representing the Asia-Pacific, you’ve made the region proud & marked a new chapter in #Taiwan’s baseball story for the whole world to see — Three cheers for the team!⚾”
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
RSS