Hsinchu Baseball Stadium, which reopened on Friday following a multi-year renovation project, has been closed indefinitely after complaints that its infield dirt is too soft and poses a safety risk to players, the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) said yesterday.
The league said in a statement that it postponed last night’s game between the Wei Chuan Dragons and Fubon Guardians after consultations with the teams and the Hsinchu City Government.
The move comes just days after the stadium reopened on Friday to a sellout crowd of 10,000 following the completion of a three-year NT$1.2 billion (US$40.11 million) renovation project.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The stadium was closed following a call by the Taiwan Professional Baseball Players Association (TPBPA) earlier yesterday for it to be temporarily shut, citing problems with the field’s soil following games on Friday and Saturday.
During Friday’s game, Wei Chuan Dragons fielder Chang Yu-ming (張祐銘) slipped while running the bases, and third baseman Liu Chi-hung (劉基鴻) injured a finger while attempting to catch a ball that bounced irregularly off the soil, the TPBPA said.
During Saturday’s game, Fubon Guardians outfielder Lin Che-hsuan (林哲瑄) injured his shoulder while fielding a ball, due to stones littering the field being kicked up during play, it said.
The TPBPA said in a statement that it “sincerely urges the league to consider temporarily suspending the scheduling of games” at the stadium to ensure a safe playing environment.
The city government yesterday said it would collect input from players and fans, and would make adjustments accordingly.
Commenting on the temporary closure, Wei Chuan Dragons head coach Yeh Chun-chang (葉君璋) said the stadium “currently has too many problems that pose a risk to players, but if the problems can be worked out, Hsinchu Baseball Stadium will be a great place to play.”
Former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) on Saturday said on Facebook that the problems rest on his shoulders.
Lin, who resigned from the post to run as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taoyuan mayoral candidate, said that although he is no longer mayor, he would work with the city, the CPBL and the teams to see that improvements can be made at the stadium.
DPP Hsinchu mayoral candidate Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹) said she was confident that the city government would respond to input from players and fans, and would work with the teams to resolve their issues.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶), the party’s Taoyuan mayoral candidate, yesterday said she supports the TPBPA’s position that safety should be the stadium’s top priority, but was skeptical of Lin’s ability to address the problem.
“Lin Chih-chien couldn’t get Hsinchu’s stadium right. Taoyuan’s stadium has also had its share of problems. Should the public trust it to Lin?” she said.
Additional reporting by Wu Ching-cheng, Tsai Chang-sheng and Lee Jung-ping
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching