A comment by Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) about the Under-12 Baseball World Cup has met with mixed responses from netizens.
Lai on Saturday said on Facebook that a decision by Japan head coach Toshihisa Nishi to suspend seven of the team’s key players from one game after they failed to report to a team meeting on time highlighted the importance Japanese place on discipline and character development.
The seven suspended players stayed on the sidelines while their 11 teammates went up against all 18 players of the US team, he said.
According to Lai, the coach’s decision was significant as it carried an important message, which the event organizers wanted to convey to baseball players and society, that respectable athletes are not defined by their ability to help their teams achieve victory — which cannot last forever — but by the discipline and noble character they demonstrate.
“The coach’s mentality of ‘discipline before anything else’ provides much food for thought for the public,” he said.
Netizens weighed in on the issue, with some saying that the mayor’s administrative style can be gauged by his remarks.
Some people likened Nishi’s decision to Lai’s boycott of the Tainan City Council meetings presided over by Tainan Council Speaker Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who is involved in bribery charges in both the city councilor and council speaker elections.
Lai has been refusing to attend Tainan City Council meetings, saying he would boycott the municipality’s council meetings until corruption cases involving Lee are settled.
“Lee Chuan-chiao alone is able to make Lai dodge the city council. One should be thankful there is only one Lee Chuan-chiao, or else the city would be doomed,” a netizen surnamed Hsieh (謝) said.
Another Internet user named “Tommy Yang” said that if Lai had attended city council sessions, it would mean that he had bowed to Lee, and that would seriously compromise the city’s democratic values.
However, some netizens criticized Lai’s apparent comparison of baseball with politics, urging people not to associate sports with politics.
“Do not politicize everything,” one netizen wrote.
Another netizen, named “Phik-ui Kiong,” said that Nishi’s decision most likely came with the support of sensible parents, who apparently agreed to instill a sense of responsibility among the young players at the cost of losing the game.
Without a full lineup, the team suffered a crushing 0-8 defeat to the US on Saturday.
“It was a tough decision to make, but education mattered more than the outcome [of a game],” Nishi was quoted as saying in a post-game interview.
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