Taiwan’s national baseball team is to compete in the final qualifying round for the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, sports officials said yesterday.
The decision to send a team to Mexico was a dramatic turnaround after Taiwan’s CPBL, with backing from all five its clubs, on Tuesday announced that it would not allow its players to travel to Mexico due to concerns over COVID-19.
The team is to compete in a mini-tournament in Puebla from June 22 to 26, featuring Australia, the Netherlands, and the second and third-placed finishers in a qualifying round for teams from the Americas starting in Florida on Monday.
The biggest name on the team would be former Chicago Cubs prospect Tseng Jen-ho (曾仁和), a 26-year-old right-hander who currently trains with the farm team of the Uni-President Lions, the officials said.
The Sports Administration and the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association (CTBA) said that they are trying to convince Taiwanese US minor league players to join the roster, which currently includes 36 players, mostly from domestic amateur teams.
Despite problems filling the roster and finding practice facilities amid a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert, CTBA secretary-general Richard Lin (林宗成) said that participating is “the nation’s honor, and we will take up this task.”
“It is most important to guarantee the health and safety of the team, and we look to the government to provide support,” he said, adding that he hopes that players could get vaccinated ahead of the qualifiers.
The team would be managed by Wu Ssu-hsien (吳思賢), a former manager of the Brothers Elephants, replacing Fubon Guardians manager Hong I-chung (洪一中), who resigned from his national team duties following the decision that no CPBL team members or staff would be allowed to participate in the round, Lin said.
Sources said that two of the nation’s most prominent players, Cleveland Indians first baseman Yu Chang (張育成) and former Boston Red Sox infielder Lin Tzu-wei (林子偉), would not participate due to the MLB teams’ injury concerns.
The CPBL’s decision to not send players found widespread support among Taiwanese baseball fans amid an increasing COVID-19 infection risk in the nation and consistently high infection risk abroad.
However, the national governing body’s decision to send a team excluding players from the domestic and North American professional leagues was endorsed by many Taiwanese users on social media.
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