Taiwan Today

The atmosphere at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei was tense on the evening of July 17 this year. It was the deciding game of the first-ever 12U Baseball World Championship, a tournament for national-level, all-star teams of players who are 12 years old or younger. Taiwan, or Chinese Taipei as the team was officially known, clung to a slim 3–2 lead over Cuba in the bottom half of the sixth inning, the last inning of 12U games. The Cuban side was at bat, having already scored a run in the inning, and there were two men out. As cheers from the sold-out audience of 9,200 reverberated around the stadium, Taiwanese pitcher Tseng Wei-en (曾偉恩), 12, wound up and delivered the ball to home plate. The Cuban batter swung and connected, but Wan Chao-ching (萬昭清), 12, quickly caught and threw the ball to first base to record the game’s final out.

And just like that, members of the local team were the delirious champions of the baseball world for their age group. “Everyone’s on cloud nine,” said Wan, who is a member of an Amis tribe in Taitung, which is located on Taiwan’s southeastern coast. The young shortstop had every right to be happy, as his two-run triple to right field in the third inning had driven in what turned out to be the game’s winning run. Another reason for the happiness of the boys from Taiwan was the fact that the game had turned testy when a Cuban player knocked down their first baseman and received a warning from the umpire, which made the eventual victory that much sweeter.

Wan and his teammates were also overjoyed because they had suffered a 6–2 loss to the Cubans in a prior game on the first day of the tournament. “The children were too nervous. They’d never played before such a huge crowd and rarely at night,” Wang Kai-lun (王凱倫), one of the three coaches of the Taiwan team, says of the initial loss in the 10-day event. Infielder Chiu Kuan-wei (邱冠威), 12, agrees with his coach’s assessment of the first game, saying “I was really frightened. That cost me two passed balls—in a row.”

Expectations for the success of the Taiwan team were somewhat limited before the tournament began. “The results pretty much surprised me,” says Richard T.C. Lin (林宗成), secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association (CTBA), the sport’s controlling body in Taiwan. “The original goal was only to reach the semifinals.” As the tournament went on, however, wins began to pile up as the individual players began to shake their fears and come together as a team.

Energetic and Mischievous

Like young boys everywhere, members of the Taiwan squad were energetic and mischievous, as well as a bit shy when talking to the media, which plied them with questions to little avail following the big win. “They’re all just nice, humble boys,” Wang says. “They even kept up the training on schedule when the coaches couldn’t be there.” The squad’s 18 players were selected by the CTBA after screening matches of top young athletes from around the nation were held in early June this year. Of the chosen players, about two-thirds hailed from eastern Taiwan and are of indigenous parentage.

“The team was made of the best members of baseball teams at grade schools from around Taiwan,” says head coach Wu Ying-syh (吳映賜). “Each was impressive if you look at the data regarding their previous performances in running, hitting, pitching and fielding the ball,” he says, adding that until they are in their late teens, young athletes in the sport are required to be all-around players instead of specializing in position-related aspects of the game. The quality of the local players could be seen in the selection of pitcher Tseng, who threw a complete game in the final match against Cuba, as MVP of the entire tournament, while shortstop Wan was named the event’s outstanding defensive player.

The coaches for the Taiwan 12U team came from Bei Nan Elementary School in Taitung, as that team emerged as the winner of the June screening matches. With the tournament beginning in early July, the young players were able to train together for only around a month. “It was kind of challenging to get to know them in such a short time. That’s why breaks between training sessions were crucial, because they offered you chances to interact with the players at a deeper level,” Wu says.

Much of the team’s training, in Taipei and Taitung, came through playing against other top-notch local teams. In Taipei, the 12U team practiced by routinely competing against a side from Er Chong Junior High School in New Taipei City. Although the Er Chong players were one to two years older and were the runners-up in the 13–14 age group at the PONY League World Series in August this year, Wu says his 12U team rarely lost to the older boys during training in Taipei.

Lin says that a large part of the credit for creating and hosting a baseball world championship for national teams of players who are 12 and younger should go to Tom Peng (彭誠浩), an entrepreneur and baseball enthusiast. Peng is a former president of the CTBA and is now a member of the executive committee of the International Baseball Federation (IBAF), a worldwide organization recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 2010, Peng was the individual responsible for submitting a proposal to create a new 12U championship to the IBAF, which had previously overseen tournaments for older age groups including 18U and 16U.

Aside from establishing an IBAF-sanctioned showcase for the best young players from around the world, the new championship was also a response to the IOC’s decision to drop baseball from the 2012 and 2016 Olympics after including the sport in the Games five consecutive times since 1992. “Baseball for children is quite popular around the world,” Lin says. “We have to make people aware of this phenomenon in order to put the sport back in the 2020 Olympics. You know, one major factor for a sport to stay in the Olympics is its global popularity.”

While the 12U Baseball World Championship was the latest addition to tournaments for young players, there are two other well-known international baseball competitions for athletes who are 11–12 years old: the US-based Little League World Series and the PONY League World Series. The difference is that teams in those tournaments are all locally based and represent a single organization such as a school or community. In contrast, IBAF events pit all-star teams against each other, which means that players are selected on a countrywide basis.

Local teams from Taiwan have frequently participated in Little League and PONY League tournaments for players in the 11–12, 13–14 and 17–18 age groups. The two championships are both based in the United States, however, and the format of the tournaments ensures that a US team always reaches the finals, greatly increasing the chances for the American players to emerge as champions.

The fact that the format of Little League and PONY League championships ensures international teams must endure fierce competition for a shot at the title does not mean that the CTBA gives those competitions less attention than IBAF events, however. The “CTBA offers equal assistance and financial support to Taiwanese teams going to these competitions, because all of the teams represent Taiwan,” Lin says. Every year the organization, which can trace its origin back to 1949, is responsible for screening local baseball teams and players in all age groups for IBAF and US-based events, as well as financing equipment purchases and travel expenses for international games. Before organizing an all-star team for the IBAF event this year, for example, the CTBA also selected teams for the PONY League and Little League World Series.

In fact, the selection process for this year’s IBAF 12U competition gave some cause for concern. Coach Wang Kai-lun says that doubts were raised about the organization’s ability to recruit the best individual players in the country because two of Taiwan’s top teams had already been selected for the PONY League and Little League matches, which occurred at around the same time as the IBAF 12U tournament. Lin readily disputes that notion, saying “There’re 180 teams, or about 4,000 players, from elementary schools around Taiwan. It’s not difficult to find real talent from such a large pool. After all, only two teams are singled out for the PONY League and Little League tournaments. The outcome of the IBAF event proves that the members of our all-star team are also the best.”

Meanwhile, it is difficult to say whether the US-based or IBAF championships are more competitive. Cuba and Venezuela, a Latin American country with a strong baseball tradition that took third place in the IBAF 12U event this year, have never played in Little League and PONY League tournaments, whereas the United States did not send a team to July’s IBAF 12U event in Taipei. According to Lin, however, after the Taipei competition, US Baseball, the governing body for the sport in the United States, is considering sending a team to the 12U championship in 2012, after which the game will occur biennially, just as with all other IBAF competitions.

Taiwan’s baseball talent first made an impact on the world stage after a local team won the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1969. The Taiwanese team first won the Far East Division before surprising a team from Santa Clara, California to win the championship on US soil. “The government initially promoted basketball and was less enthusiastic about baseball, which was considered a legacy of the Japanese colonizers. But the government’s attitude changed after the 1969 victory, when it started to look at the sport as a vehicle for bringing glory to Taiwan,” Lin says.

The government has since actively pushed for the sport’s development in schools and the performance of Taiwanese players in international competitions has not failed local fans. Taiwan’s team for 11- and 12-year-old players won the Little League World Series every year from 1971 to 1974 and has claimed many more victories since then. In view of the diplomatic isolation confronting Taiwan since the Republic of China withdrew from the United Nations in 1971, such achievements have been especially uplifting for the public.

Over the years, Taiwan has grabbed a total of 17 titles at the Little League World Series. Taiwan won its most recent trophy in 1996, withdrew from the competition from 1997 to 2002 due to rule changes and began participating once more in 2003.

Big Boost to Baseball

Taiwanese teams began playing in the PONY League World Series in 1994 and have since won the 11–12 age group championship five times. The most recent PONY League victory in that age group for a local squad came in August this year, giving another big boost to baseball in Taiwan.

Success in youth competitions has established a solid foundation for the development of the sport in Taiwan. “The team [that won the first IBAF 12U tournament] disbanded at the end of the championship game, but most of the boys will take a spot on the baseball teams at the junior high schools that recruited them,” coach Wu Ying-syh says. If those young players continue to progress in the sport, they will have a good chance to play on the national team in IBAF championships for older players. Taiwan has participated in the IBAF’s 18U tournaments since their inception in 1981 and in its 16U events since they began in 1989. The country had won a total of three championships in the 18U and 16U events as well as hosted five IBAF tournaments before the 12U game this year.

And nine years from now, Taiwan’s young baseball stars may even go on to gain an opportunity to play at the 2020 Olympic Games and match or surpass the honor the country achieved in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where the Taiwan team grabbed a silver medal in baseball. The IOC, however, will not decide whether baseball can make a comeback in the world’s biggest sporting event until 2013.

More than a few of Taiwan’s stars in international baseball got their start in youth leagues. Kuo Yuan-chih (郭源治), for example, was a member of the Little League World Series championship team in 1969 and went on to enjoy an outstanding career in professional baseball in Japan and Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s. Present-day star Wang Chien-ming (王建民) was a member of Taiwan’s team that took second place at the Boys Nankyu World Championship in 1991, an international tournament in Japan. Wang has become Taiwan’s best-known baseball export by pitching first for US Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and now for the Washington Nationals.

“All the young players [on the 12U team] are full of potential,” says Huang Ping-yang (黃平洋), the honorary leader of the team. “With continued effort, they definitely can rise to fame in the future.” Currently a Taipei City councilor, Huang was a member of the Taiwanese team that won the 1978 Little League World Series for 13- and 14-year-olds. He also won another Little League world title in the 17–18 age group and went on to play in Taiwan’s professional baseball league.

Regardless of what happens in the future, the inaugural 12U Baseball World Championship will always belong to Taiwan. “People often only remember the place where an event is held for the first time, not the second or third time,” Lin says. The victory at this year’s event has also reignited local passion for the game following a spate of match-fixing scandals in Taiwan’s professional baseball league that began marring the image of the sport in the mid-1990s. “The victory has greatly boosted the confidence of all the people, coaches and players who’ve devoted themselves to the sport,” Lin says. “It reminds everybody that Taiwan’s still really strong in baseball.”

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw