Little Leaguers find success practicing on basketball court

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.

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