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Updated Thursday, November 5, 2009 9:22 am TWN, The China Post news staff

A respite for professional baseball in Taiwan

As more game-fixing scandals are coming to light, President Ma Ying-jeou and his Premier Wu Den-yih had to promise all-out government efforts to try to save Taiwan's ailing Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBA). Public prosecutors have found all but one of the four CPBL teams were involved, while one former head coach claimed the fixing was as old as the league itself, though he later recanted.

The league was set up 20 years ago and has been plagued by four book-making scandals in a row in the past four years. That's why many people except enthusiastic fans don't want any more professional baseball in Taiwan.

Ma does have a few reasons to give the dying CPBA a new lease on life. First and foremost, his wife Christine Chow is a great fan of the Brother Elephants whose former pitcher Tsao Chin-hui, a one-time Los Angeles Dodger, is alleged to have been wined and dined by a bookmaker to lose many games to help the latter make a lot of quick bucks. Another reason is that a few hundred die-hard fans took to the streets in Taipei on Sunday, demanding professional baseball be kept alive. They are a vociferous group, claiming to represent about three million baseball fans across the nation. Actually, most baseball fans now tune in on TV to watch Major League games in the United States, which are much, much better than those in Taiwan they have long lost interest in. It makes sense. Why should they waste money for watching poorly played games in local stadiums when they can view much better American baseball free on the screen? Still another is Ma's somewhat guilty conscience. He barred professional baseball from Taipei when he was mayor of the capital city for eight years until 2006. Fans call him the terminator of professional baseball in Taipei and he doesn't want to bear the national title by letting the CPBL conk out, although the government has no business trying to bail it out. The government may promote amateur baseball as a national game or even a national pastime but it isn't obliged to save a private profit-seeking enterprise like the CPBL from going under.

Probably, Ma thinks it's necessary to keep the CPBL for now, which has been contracted to host next year's Asian regional professional baseball championships. Taiwan would lose face, if another league in Asia takes the place of the CPBL if it is terminated.

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