A documentary on the national baseball team’s first major international championship at last year’s WBSC Premier12 is set to premiere across the nation on Jan. 1 next year.
Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and memory and storage manufacturer ADATA Technology Co copresented the documentary Hero! Hito! (冠軍之路) at a news conference in Taipei yesterday, which also marked the first anniversary of the team’s historic achievement.
CPBL commissioner Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said he believes even those who are not baseball fans would find resonance in the film, as it portrays a breakthrough against various adversities and mirrors Taiwan’s international circumstances.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
“What we did in this film is restage the circumstances and players’ emotions during the tournament as authentically as possible,” director Lungnan Isak Fangas (陳龍男) said.
Lungnan encouraged people to watch the film multiple times, because it is filled with many subtle details viewers might miss on their first viewing.
The player interviews in the documentary were filmed intensively in March, during the interval between the World Baseball Classic (WBC) qualifier and the 2025 regular seasons in Taiwan and the US, he said.
He also expressed hope that Team Taiwan would enjoy another successful run at the 2026 WBC to warrant a follow-up documentary.
According to sports betting Web site DraftKings Sportsbook, Taiwan is tied with Israel and Australia for the 14th-best odds among the 20 teams, ahead of only the UK, the Czech Republic, Nicaragua and Brazil.
The US leads all teams, followed by Japan and the Dominican Republic.
Taiwan is to play Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Australia in Pool C in March, with its first game slated against Australia on March 5.
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