Little Leaguers find success practicing on basketball court

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.

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