After all, the school faces a fundamental limitation: it doesn't have a baseball field. Chen and head coach Li Cheng-tah must scramble around the area looking for games with other schools or take his team to a public park eight kilometers away to get access to legitimate baseball diamonds.

The main training ground where the team developed the skills underpinning its improbable run from Kuei-Shan, a small hilly town in Taiwan's northern Taoyuan County, to runner-up in the Little League World Series this past summer is the school's cement basketball court, which only made the run sweeter for its participants and inspirational for its fans.

“It's been a magic journey for us — from a cement basketball court to Williamsport — thanks to many people's persistence and good will,” Chen said. The team is gearing up for two more tournaments in the next two months — the Guan Huai (Concern and Care) Cup Little League Tournament that begins in Hualien on Nov. 20 and a world invitational tournament that will feature more than 100 teams from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and the Philippines in Taipei in December. Many are curious to see how Kuei-Shan will fare in the two competitions, but, regardless of how well they play, its players will have a hard time measuring up to their summer exploits.

To many baseball players in Taiwan, Williamsport holds special significance because it represents the site of the country's greatest run of international baseball success. Taiwan dominated the annual tournament in the late 20th century, taking 17 championship titles between 1969 and 1996.

Local teams had been in a relative tailspin since then, not reaching a single Little League World Series title game between 1997 and 2008, but Kuei-Shan's performance restored some of the country's pride.

The team won the international half of the World Series draw before letting a three-run third-inning lead slip away in a 6-3 loss to American Champion West Chula Vista, California, in the championship game.

Just to get to the World Series, it had to capture the national title in May and then win the Asia-Pacific Regional Tournament in July.

That the squad even made it to any of the tournaments without major injuries to its players can be considered every bit as amazing as actually reaching the World Series final on Aug. 30.

The players trained every day on the school's basketball court — often suffering bad bruises and holes in their pants when they practiced sliding on the cement court's unforgiving surfaces — but the team had enough chances to play games against other schools with legitimate fields to keep its players in one piece.

Formerly a little league player who went on to become the head coach of Fu Lin Elementary School in Taipei City, known as a cradle of Little Leaguers in Taiwan, head coach Li was particularly upset with Kuei-Shan's lack of facilities.

To him, and probably any other baseball coach, teams should be able to practice on a baseball diamond with a dirt infield, a backstop and preferably an automatic pitching machine.

The situation improved slightly in September 2008 when a baseball stadium was built in Kuei-Shan Township eight kilometers from the school, and Li and Chen have regularly taken the players to practice there since then.

The team first made a name for itself in December 2007, when it won the Guan Huai Cup tournament, an event jointly sponsored by indigenous pro baseball players, the United Daily News, the Sports Affairs Council, the Council of Indigenous Peoples and the Chinese Professional Baseball League.

The annual tournament is open to elementary school teams from around the country where at least 70 percent of the players are indigenous peoples. Many of the players on the Kuei-Shan team are from the Amis or Rukai tribe.

After winning the Guan Huai Cup event that year, Kuei-Shan stepped up its participation in baseball competitions. “Playing in competitive games is the best and fast way of honing the boys' skills and reflexes,” Chen said.

The Guan Huai tournament also proved to be a turning point in the team's funding crisis. Despite strong performances in previous years, the school did not have enough money to send its team to Hualien in eastern Taiwan. Chen Kuo-chen, an alumnus of Kuei-Shan Elementary School and chairman and CEO of Taiwan Wacoal Co., one of the leading lingerie makers in the country, received an appeal for help a week before the team's planned departure.

He quietly donated NT$100,000 so that the team could make the trip and threw in boxer shorts from his company for the players and coaches for good measure.

Since that tournament victory, financial support from private benefactors and the local government has helped keep the team afloat, and Li has made sure his team fulfilled the promise of that additional support by preparing his players for every challenge they were to face.

Once his team captured this year's national Little League title, Li pushed his players harder, refusing to use the school's dilapidated facilities as an excuse. He brought in junior and senior high school pitchers to pepper his players with a steady stream of breaking balls to get them ready for the Asia-Pacific regional.

The practice was needed because only two Little League tournaments in Taiwan allow players to throw breaking balls, but no such restrictions exist in international play, and Taiwan's lineup figured to see a steady stream of off-speed pitches in the regional competition.

After the team won the tournament, Li then made sure the players got accustomed to playing on a grass infield, a luxury in Taiwan even at the professional level but something they would have to deal with in Williamsport.

Though the team lost in the World Series final, it inspired many who joined the bandwagon as it progressed through the tournament's draw.

The wife of Coach Chen, Huang Yu-ching, who traveled with the team to Williamsport to take care of the boys' daily needs, wept when she saw the players crouched down on the field after losing the championship game, weeping and scooping clay into bottles.

“Because of the boys' perseverance, we adults dared to have dreams,” she said.